Category: Flu Vaccine

Page 67«..1020..64656667

Covid jabs will have to be tweaked annually like flu until universal vaccine is discovered – iNews

August 22, 2022

Covid vaccines are likely to become like influenza jabs, that are tweaked every year and offered to vulnerable people every autumn, according to a leading vaccine developer.

Professor Robin Shattock of Imperial College London says there are two approaches to next generation vaccines; the annual flu jab approach and the Holy Grail of the one-vaccine-fits-all-variants approach.

In the same way that the influenza vaccine is updated every year and given to the vulnerable population, an annual vaccine could be given for Covid as well, said Professor Shattock, a pioneer of the same RNA vaccine technology that is used by the Moderna and Pfizer jabs.

It would be tweaked each year just like the flu jab I think thats the most likely scenario in the medium term, he says.

This option is pretty effective, he argues. Even better, however, is the idea of a universal Covid jab although if the quest for a university flu vaccine is anything to go by, we shouldnt hold our breath.

The thing that people are trying to go after is to get a vaccine that will cover all variants. This gets people very excited and obviously is something that people should go for.

But he added: They have been trying to do the same thing for influenza for the past 20 years, so its not to say that its impossible but its also unlikely to be developed in the short term.

One can always have an exciting breakthrough that will change everything but I think in the next few years its going to more likely be updating the vaccine, rather than that weve suddenly discovered a universal coronavirus vaccine.

However things pan out in the coming years, it is likely that the Covid jab, like the flu vaccine that will be administered at the same time, will essentially is used to reduce hospital admissions, not to control transmission.

That is because, given the expense and resources needed to run a vaccination campaign, the main aim is not so much to eliminate all infections but to reduce the risk of serious illness when infection strikes.

Moreover, total elimination of infections isnt feasible because Covid jabs will only prevent a minority of infections but it will prevent the vast majority of severe cases.

With this in mind, Professor Shattock argues that, were the autumn booster campaign to be broadened out to the whole population, it would be less important for any additional groups to have the jab although clearly any reduction in infections is a good thing.

But its likely that any immunity built up from prior infection and vaccination will protect them against severe illness for some time to come, experts said.

Excerpt from:

Covid jabs will have to be tweaked annually like flu until universal vaccine is discovered - iNews

Flu in Fife: Parents urged to get children vaccinated ahead of winter flu season – Fife Today

August 22, 2022

NHS Fife made the call as youngsters returned to school after the summer break.

All primary and secondary school pupils are eligible for the vaccine, which is given in schools as a painless nasal spray.

NHS Fife said vaccination against flu reduces the chances of them missing class time and other activities due to illness and helps prevent them passing the illness to vulnerable family members.

Consent packs containing a letter, leaflet and consent form will be sent home to parents and carers of school children on return to school.

Secondary pupils can self-consent, though they are encouraged to speak to a parent or carer first.

Letters with appointment details for children aged two to five years who are not yet at school will begin to arrive at homes from September.

The nasal spray is a quick and painless way of delivering the flu vaccine to children and should start to provide protection within 10-14 days.

Dr Esther Curnock, consultant in public health medicine, said: Getting the nasal spray flu vaccine is the best way to protect your child and those around them.

The flu virus changes over time so your child needs to get the vaccine each year to help stay protected.

The message was backed by Maree Todd MSP, Public Health Minister.She said: Flu can be serious, even for healthy children, so the vaccine offers the best possible protection for your child and those around them who may be more vulnerable to flu. Getting your child vaccinated can help prevent them getting sick, from spreading flu, and requiring time off school and away from other activities.

School children will receive the flu vaccine in school between September and December. Parents of two to five-year-olds who are not yet at school will be given information about where their child will be vaccinated in their appointment letter.

In a small number of cases, the nasal spray may not be suitable, and the vaccine can be given as an injection.

Read more here:

Flu in Fife: Parents urged to get children vaccinated ahead of winter flu season - Fife Today

What You Need To Know About Flu Strains – Health Essentials

August 9, 2022

What we all know as the flu is actually a collection of influenza virus strains that mutate (change) over time. Protecting yourself from these potentially dangerous viruses is best done by getting the flu vaccine and practicing everyday prevention techniques, like proper hand washing and avoiding sick people.

Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services.Policy

We talked with infectious disease doctorSherif Mossad, MD, about the many strains of flu and how you can keep from getting sick this flu season.

What all flu strains have in common are the symptoms they cause, Dr. Mossad says. Fever. Headache. Cough. Those are the three cardinal manifestations of all flu viruses. Flu can cause stomach issues for some people, too, but stomach flu is really a misnomer.

There are three types of flu viruses that affect people. Theyre known as influenza viruses A, B and C. Influenza A and influenza B viruses are the heavy hitters. Theyre the ones that cause the most severe illness and lead to widespread outbreaks. Influenza C viruses cause mild illnesses in people. Theyre more similar to a common cold, Dr. Mossad says, and they arent detected by flu tests.

(Fun fact: There is an influenza D virus, but its mostly found in cattle and hasnt been known to affect people.)

When people talk about the flu, its really influenza A and B viruses. Theyre the viruses that are responsible for our annual flu season.

Influenza A viruses are the most common flu viruses. Theyre the cause of regular seasonal flu outbreaks, as well as global flu pandemics. Influenza A viruses can affect both people and animals.

The 1918 pandemic and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic (what some people call the swine flu), for example, were Influenza A virus outbreaks.

Dr. Mossad says influenza A virus outbreaks usually occur earlier in the flu season. In the Northern Hemisphere, influenza A is most likely to make its rounds from October to March.

Common strains of influenza A include the H1N1 and H3N2 varieties.

Influenza B viruses affect only people, not animals, and they dont spread to the point of pandemics. Influenza B viruses are more likely to make you sick later in the flu season, from about January to May in the Northern Hemisphere.

There are so many different strains of flu viruses that the World Health Organization (WHO) created an internationally accepted naming convention to help track them.

The name of each virus is made up of:

So, for example, the A/Sydney/05/97(H3N2) virus is an influenza A virus that originated in Sydney, is strain number five, was collected in 1997 and is an H3N2 subtype.

Long story short: There are boatloads of flu strains out there. And theyre constantly changing and creating new viruses.

Dr. Mossad explains there are two ways the flu virus mutates.

Antigenic drift refers to the small ways in which the flu virus mutates each year. Antigenic drift is the reason for annual flu epidemics. So, even if you had one strain of H3N2 last year, its now a little different, and you can get it again this year.

Antigenic shift is a tidal wave of flu virus mutation.

Antigenic shift is when viruses change so much that you wind up with a virus that humans have never been exposed to at all, Dr. Mossad says. Thats what happened in 2009 with the H1N1 swine flu virus. It was an entirely new virus to humans, so no one had built up any immunity to it at all.

Each year, the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitor trends to determine the strains of flu thatll be most common. And each year, the flu vaccine is created to protect you from what these experts expect will be the two most prevalent influenza A viruses and two most prevalent influenza B viruses for that flu season.

For the 2022 flu season, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined that egg-based influenza vaccines (the most commonly used vaccine method) would be formulated for these viruses:

Remember, the flu virus mutates. Fast. So getting a flu shot every year is the absolute best method to protect yourself from the strains that are likely to make their rounds this season.

In addition to getting your flu shot every fall, Dr. Mossad suggests these best practices to stay healthy this flu season:

View post:

What You Need To Know About Flu Strains - Health Essentials

Flu vaccine numbers on the rise | Wyndham – Wyndham Star Weekly

August 9, 2022

More than half a million Victorians have received their free flu vaccine this flu season.

Health minister Mary-Anne Thomas on Thursday announced that more than 500,000 Victorians received a vaccine from more than 2,150 GPs and pharmacies that participated in the state governments $33 million free flu vaccine program between June 1 and July 10 this year.

The total number of people vaccinated for influenza has increased by 22.2 per cent from last year.

By removing as many barriers as possible, hundreds of thousands more Victorians rolled up their sleeves for a flu vaccination this year and helped protect their loved ones and our health system, Ms Thomas said.

Victorians have helped their families stay safe this winter by getting vaccinated for both the flu and COVID-19, getting tested if you have any symptoms, and staying home while unwell.

Even though rates of flu have declined from their peak, its still not too late to receive your flu vaccination.

Ms Thomas reiterated the importance of people, such as those in Wyndham, staying up to date with flu and COVID-19 vaccines.

Details: betterhealth.vic.gov.au/stay-well-this-winter.

Here is the original post:

Flu vaccine numbers on the rise | Wyndham - Wyndham Star Weekly

Flu Vaccine Market Size 2022 with 4.8 % CAGR : new business prospects by identifying trends and driving forces and Forecast up to 2027 Shanghaiist -…

August 9, 2022

industrydataanalytics market research published new research on Flu Vaccine covering the micro-level of analysis by competitors and key business segments (2022-2027). The global Flu Vaccine explores a comprehensive study on various segments like opportunities, size, development, innovation, sales, and overall growth of major players. The research is carried out on primary and secondary statistics sources and it consists of both qualitative and quantitative detailing.

The global Flu Vaccine Market size is projected to accrue voluminously by 2027 registering a phenomenal CAGR of 4.8% during the review period (2022 to 2027)

Some of the Major Key players profiled in the study are Sanofi Pasteur, CSL, GSK, Mylan, Hulan Bio, AstraZeneca, CCBIO and others.

Get a free sample copy of this report (20% discount)

https://www.industrydataanalytics.com/reports/flu-vaccine-market/inquiry?mode=126

The global Flu Vaccine Market research report delivers a comprehensive analysis of market size, market trends, and market growth prospects. This report also delivers extensive information on the technology expenditure for the forecast period, which gives a unique view of the global Flu Vaccine Market across numerous segments. The global Flu Vaccine market report also allows consumers recognize market prospects and challenges.

Various factors are responsible for the markets growth trajectory, which are studied at length in the report. In addition, the report lists down the restraints that are posing threat to the global Flu Vaccine market. This report is a consolidation of primary and secondary research, which provides market size, share, dynamics, and forecast for various segments and sub-segments considering the macro and micro environmental factors. It also gauges the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, threat from new entrants and product substitutes, and the degree of competition prevailing in the market.

Global Flu Vaccine Market Split by Product Type and Applications:

Market Segmentation: By Type

Trivalent Influenza Vaccine

Quadrivalent Influenza Vaccine

Others

Market Segmentation: By Application

For Children (6 months to 3 years)

For Adults and Children over 3 years

Others

Key market aspects are illuminated in the report:

Executive Summary: It covers a summary of the most vital studies, the Global Flu Vaccine market increasing rate, modest circumstances, market trends, drivers and problems as well as macroscopic pointers.

Study Analysis: Covers major companies, vital market segments, the scope of the products offered in the Global Flu Vaccine market, the years measured, and the study points.

Company Profile: Each Firm well-defined in this segment is screened based on a product, value, SWOT analysis, their ability and other significant features.

Production by region: This Global Flu Vaccine report offers data on imports and exports, sales, production and key companies in all studied regional markets

Market Dynamics: This report covers the drivers, trends and opportunities of the global Flu Vaccine Market. This section also includes Porters analysis of five forces.Access Full Summary @ https://www.industrydataanalytics.com/reports/flu-vaccine-market?mode=126

Highlighting points of Global Flu Vaccine Market Report:

Table of Contents

Global Flu Vaccine Market Research Report 2022 2027

Chapter 1 Flu Vaccine Market Overview

Chapter 2 Global Economic Impact on Industry

Chapter 3 Global Market Competition by Manufacturers

Chapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by region

Chapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions

Chapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type

Chapter 7 Global Market Analysis by Application

Chapter 8 Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Chapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers

Chapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Chapter 11 Market Effect Factors Analysis

Chapter 12 Global Flu Vaccine Market Forecast

Conclusion: The Report provides strong recommendations for new as well as established players for securing a position of strength in the global Flu Vaccine Market.

Additional paid Services:

About Us:

IndustryDataAnalytics is your single point market research source for all industries including pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, energy resources, automobile, IT, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others.

Head of Sales: Mr. Hon Irfan Tamboli

+1 (704) 266-3234 | contact@industrydataanalytics.com

Original post:

Flu Vaccine Market Size 2022 with 4.8 % CAGR : new business prospects by identifying trends and driving forces and Forecast up to 2027 Shanghaiist -...

How to ensure your child has a healthy school year – East Idaho News

August 9, 2022

HealthPublished at 10:00 am, August 8, 2022|Updated at 4:09 pm, August 8, 2022

Stock image

As children enter classrooms each fall, they are often joined by our perennial friend, drippy nose and head congestion. Yes, fall is just around the corner, and with it comes busy schedules as well as colds, flu and maybe a little COVID too.

When a cold or flu strikes, at best, a child does not feel, eat or sleep well causing both the child to miss school and the parent to miss work. At worst, a cold develops into something more and may precipitate a visit to your primary care physician. While adults typically get two to four colds a year, children average 6-8 a year. Between September and April, colds and the flu can seriously disrupt normal daily routines.

However, there are practical tips to help keep you and your family healthy this season. There are literally hundreds of viruses that cause cold and flu symptoms, but unlike bacterial infections, which are treated with antibiotics, there are no medications to kill the viruses that simply make us feel lousy.

The goal then becomes one of protecting ourselves from getting infected in the first place. Hand washing, hand washing and more hand washing are three simple steps to preventing a cold or flu. Because these little viruses can also become airborne with coughing and sneezing, people should also have a clean tissue to cough or sneeze into.

For example, the little girl who sits next to your child sneezes into her hand and then touches your childs pencil. A minute later, your child uses the pencil and then scratches her nose. She may have exposed her nasal cavity to a virus. It really is that simple.

Regular soap and water are fine. Because it is a virus and not bacteria, antibacterial soap is not necessary. Liquid hand sanitizers do a good job if soap and water are not available.

The first step in prevention is making sure to stop the contact spread of viruses by way of hygiene. The second step to preventing infection is immunizations including the flu vaccine. Everyone over the age of 6 months can get a flu shot, and most children over the age of 2 can get the nasal spray version.

Lastly, to keep your family in good health, this school year make sure to give their bodies the resources they need to fuel their immune system including nutrient-rich foods and an adequate amount of sleep.

Essential vitamins, minerals, proteins, and carbs in a healthy diet work to keep the immune system strong. Similarly, studies have shown that sleep-deprived individuals often have impaired immune systems. In general, toddlers and early elementary children require 11 to 13 hours of sleep, elementary school children need between 10 and 11 hours, tweens between 9 and 10, and teenagers and adults between 8 and 9.

As the children head back to the books this fall, be sure to have them wash their hands, schedule well visits to receive the recommended immunizations, eat a healthy balanced diet and get plenty of sleep. If someone catches a cold, stay home, rest and recover.

If you or a loved one is in need of a primary care physician, the Portneuf Primary Care team is taking new patients. Visit PortneufMedicalGroup.org or call (208) 239-DOCS.

See the article here:

How to ensure your child has a healthy school year - East Idaho News

13219 flu vaccines administered in the last week – Ministry of Health

August 9, 2022

The numbers as at 29 July 2022

Getting the flu vaccine helps reduce your risk of getting really sick or having to go to hospital.

As expected, many are presenting at hospital with severe flu-related symptoms. Funded eligibility for the flu vaccine has been extended.

Flu vaccines are free for those people most likely to get very sick people who are over 65 years of age; Mori and Pacific people over 55 years of age; pregnant people; tamariki aged 3-12 years old, and those with underlying and other health conditions.

We encourage everyoneto get afluvaccination if they are not yet immunised.

We also remind peopleto stay home if they are unwell, regardless of their COVID-19 test result. Staying home when unwell is one of the most important public health measures to prevent transmission of all respiratory illnesses.

From1 July, flu vaccinations became free for all tamariki aged 3-12 years old, and for people with serious mental health conditions or addiction.To keep your child and whnau healthy this winter, its important they have a flu vaccination, and are also up to date with their other vaccinations, including COVID-19 andMMR.Tamariki aged under 9 may require two doses of the flu vaccination, 4 weeks apart, if they have not had it before.

Data may vary from week to week as flu records are updated

Read more:

13219 flu vaccines administered in the last week - Ministry of Health

Is There a Nasal Spray COVID Vaccine? Researchers Are Working on It – CNET

August 9, 2022

The coronavirus is a respiratory virus, and it makes us sick by latching onto the cells in our upper respiratory tract, including our nose and throat. It should come as no surprise, then, that scientists are working on a nasal COVID-19 vaccine to stop the disease right where it starts.

The current injectable vaccines including Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson in the US have proved to be wildly effective at preventing severe disease and have saved roughly 20 million lives globally during the pandemic, according to an estimateby researchers at the Imperial College London. (The newly authorized Novavax would've been left out of this equation.) But as we learned during the delta surge last summer, the available vaccines do not block all COVID-19 infections, especially as the virus mutates into more contagious forms.

Researchers propose that nasal vaccines, however, may stand a better chance of blocking infections and making people less contagious by working in the mucosa (the lining of the nose). Dr. Joel Ernst, professor of medicine and chief of the division of experimental medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, explained some of the benefits to CNET's Abrar Al-Heeti.

"A nasal vaccine will induce an immune response all over the body too, but it's actually concentrated in the upper respiratory tract where the COVID virus, the SARS-COV2 virus, enters," Ernst said.

Nasal vaccines (coined "nasal spritzes" by Scientific American) have other benefits, including being easier to administer (there's no needle hazard or needle learning curve) and offering a more palatable approach to immunity for the approximately one out of 10 Americans with a needle phobia.

There is no nasal COVID-19 vaccine up for authorization on the US market right now, but research looks promising. There are numerous nasal COVID-19 vaccines in development, according to Ernst, but most are very early in the trial stage. One study done on mice from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases found that thepotency of nasal vaccinationwaned at about the same rate as the potency of mRNA vaccination (Moderna and Pfizer). But nasal vaccines started working faster than the injectable vaccines.

And the road to a nasal COVID-19 vaccine being accepted has already been partly smoothed over by the nasal flu vaccine on the market, FluMist Quadrivalent.

Ernst said that many researchers are looking at nasal vaccines as boosters, and they carry some production challenges. But the future of nasal COVID-19 vaccines looks fairly bright.

Besides development challenges, the fact that most people now have some immunity to COVID-19 either through vaccination or infection makes it difficult to test an entirely new vaccine in clinical trials, Ernst explained. While we might need to wait a year or two for clinical trials and authorization in order for nasal vaccines to hit the market: "I think the prospects are pretty good that we're going to have nasal vaccines," Ernst said.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Read the rest here:

Is There a Nasal Spray COVID Vaccine? Researchers Are Working on It - CNET

Conspiracy theories about monkeypox: Dj vu all over again or same as it ever was? – Science Based Medicine

August 9, 2022

Last Thursday, the Biden administration officially declared the rapidly growing monkeypox outbreak to be a national public health emergency (PHE). Its a declaration that the virus represents a significant risk to Americans and frees up resources to address that threat:

The declaration by Xavier Becerra, President Bidens health secretary, marks just the fifth such national emergency since 2001, and comes as the country remains in a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak late last month.

Mr. Becerras announcement, at an afternoon news briefing where he was joined by a raft of other top health officials, gives federal agencies power to quickly direct money toward developing and evaluating vaccines and drugs, to gain access to emergency funding and to hire additional workers to help manage the outbreak, which began in May.

Currently, there have been over 6,000 cases of monkeypox reported in the US, and its hard not to get a feeling of, as Yogi Berras delightfully twisted term described, dj vu all over again, after the declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) that COVID-19 had become a pandemic nearly two and a half years ago. What do I mean? Youd think that after all this time dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic the US would be prepared if another pathogen arose with the potential to become pandemic itself, but the response to the monkeypox outbreak has thus far shattered that expectation, as this New York Times article suggests:

Supplies of the monkeypox vaccine, called Jynneos, have been severely constrained, and the administration has been criticized for moving too slowly to expand the number of doses. Less than a decade ago, the United States had 20 million Jynneos doses; by May, the vast majority of them had expired.

In echoes of the early coronavirus response, tests have been difficult to obtain, surveillance has been spotty and it has been challenging to get an accurate count of cases. The administration has also been faulted for not doing enough to educate people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, who are at high risk, before gay pride celebrations in June.

We have 5 percent of the worlds population and 25 percent of the worlds cases, said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease physician at Emory University in Atlanta. That, to me, honestly, is a failure. We were caught sleeping at the wheel.

Of course, monkeypox is a different disease than COVID-19. Whereas COVID-19 was a brand new disease caused by a new coronavirus to which the population was immunologically naive, monkeypox has been around for a while. Even so, back in May, when the first cases in the US were making the news, Dr. Novella expressed much the same sentiment as I am now:

Now, outbreaks understandably make people a little twitchy. I remember in February 2020 the voices of reason were saying about COVID (myself included) that we should be concerned, but its too early to panic. I dont know if in retrospect that struck the right tone (without Monday morning quarterbacking), but it feels like we are in the same place now with the monkeypox.

However we deal with monkeypox (and right now Im not particularly optimistic about our government response), the disease, showing up so soon after COVID-19 while the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging, provides an excellent teachable moment about conspiracy theories and antivaccine misinformation. Why? Because the very same conspiracy theories that arose about COVID-19 (in some cases slightly modified) are showing up about monkeypox, thus demonstrating that truly there is, as I like to say, nothing new under the sun in terms of conspiracy theories about disease outbreaks and vaccines.

First, however, what is monkeypox?

As I mentioned, in contrast to COVID-19, monkeypox is not a new disease. Its been around for a while and is relatively known. The monkeypox virus itself is a member of the Orthopoxvirus genus in the family Poxviridae, the same genus as the smallpox virus, to which it is closely related. Fortunately, monkeypox is less contagious and produces less serious disease than smallpox, which, before vaccination eliminated it in the 1970s, had long been a scourge of humanity, with traces of smallpox having been found in the head of the 3,000 year old mummy of Pharaoh Ramses V. For example, smallpox killed roughly one-third of those infected with it and often left survivors with horrible scars from the pox lesions on the skin that were characteristic of the disease. Since the eradication of smallpox was officially declared in 1980, monkeypox has emerged as the most important orthopoxvirus for public health.

In terms of symptoms, monkeypox causes fever, headache, lymphadenopathy, and then the characteristic pox rash with skin eruptions, which can number from a few to thousands, to the point that in especially severe cases sections of skin can slough off. The overall disease course usually lasts between 2-4 weeks, with poorer outcomes in those with underlying immune deficiencies, and potential complications include secondary infections, bronchopneumonia, sepsis, encephalitis, and infection of the cornea with ensuing loss of vision. The WHO reports that in modern times the case fatality ratio is around 3-6%.

A zoonotic disease, monkeypox can infect a number of animal species besides monkeys and human, including rope squirrels, tree squirrels, Gambian pouched rats, dormice, non-human primates and other species. Before the current outbreak, the disease had been mostly confined to central and West Africa, with a history dating back to 1970:

Human monkeypox was first identified in humans in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a 9-month-old boy in a region where smallpox had been eliminated in 1968. Since then, most cases have been reported from rural, rainforest regions of the Congo Basin, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and human cases have increasingly been reported from across central and west Africa.

Since 1970, human cases of monkeypox have been reported in 11 African countries: Benin, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Cote dIvoire, Liberia, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. The true burden of monkeypox is not known. For example, in 199697, an outbreak was reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a lower case fatality ratio and a higher attack rate than usual. A concurrent outbreak of chickenpox (caused by the varicella virus, which is not an orthopoxvirus) and monkeypox was found, which could explain real or apparent changes in transmission dynamics in this case. Since 2017, Nigeria has experienced a large outbreak, with over 500 suspected cases and over 200 confirmed cases and a case fatality ratio of approximately 3%. Cases continue to be reported until today.

However, the disease has been found outside of Africa dating back two decades, as in 2003 the first outbreak in the US occurred and was linked to contact with infected pet prairie dogs. Monkeypox has also been reported in travelers from Africa to Israel, the United Kingdom, and Singapore before the most recent outbreak.

As far as transmission, fortunately monkeypox is far less transmissible than SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is. Its mode of transmission is also different in that its primary mode of spread appears not to be respiratory but rather, as the WHO notes, through close contact with respiratory secretions, skin lesions of an infected person or recently contaminated objects. In the current outbreak, sexual contact, particularly sex between males, is the primary mode of transmission:

Right now, about 98% of monkeypox cases are in queer and gay folks and our sexual networks. Of course, that includes trans and non-binary folks, says Joseph Osmundson, a biologist at New York University who identifies as queer and is helping to lead the effort to stop the outbreak.

Sexual contact is not the only way monkeypox is spread, points out infectious disease doctor Susan McLellan at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. But she agrees with Osmundson: It is by far the most likely way in this current outbreak, so far.

Epidemiological data for the outbreak in Western Europe and the United States makes that clear, she says. Were not detecting many cases in kids and individuals who arent sexually active. Were detecting cases mostly in individuals from networks with a lot of sexual encounters.

As several scientists have pointed out, although its mode of transmission is primarily through sex, monkeypox as it is spreading now is not just a sexually transmitted disease. Its possible to get the disease through other means, such as face-to-face interactions and touching contaminated objects, but these routes of transmission are very rare and likely require quite prolonged contact.

Fortunately, those of us old enough to have been vaccinated against smallpox likely have some protection, and there is a vaccine against monkeypox. Unfortunately, that vaccine is not yet nearly as widely available as it should be.

On to the conspiracy theories

As I pointed out when COVID-19 first hit, every time there is an outbreak of a new disease (or even a not-so-new disease), conspiracy theories declaring the outbreak to have been due to release from a laboratory, either accidental or intentional, of the pathogen responsible arise. These conspiracy theories arose for HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and the H1N1 pandemic, among others, and they appeared with a vengeance after COVID-19.

Indeed, I love to point out that the very first lab leak conspiracy theory that I encountered about COVID-19 came from James Lyons-Weiler in February 2020. Lyons-Weiler appeared on Del Bigtrees video show and claimed to have broken the coronavirus code. In brief, he reported that he had found in the just-published nucleotide sequence of SARS-CoV-2 sequences from an artificial plasmid commonly used in molecular biology research to express protein from genes and to transfer genes from one vector to another. Naturally, because he is an antivaxxer, Lyons-Weiler claimed that this sequence came from a failed effort to make a vaccine against the original SARS virus that caused a major outbreak in 2002, thus letting him conveniently link a conspiracy theory that the coronavirus had been engineered in a lab with a chance to blame vaccines for the virus. If true, obviously, that would be strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 had been engineered. However, for someone who before turning antivax crank had run bioinformatics core facilities Lyons-Weiler made a lot of rookie mistakes, and his analysis did not show what he claimed that it did, as I described in gory detail. Unfortunately, lab leak conspiracy theories about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 still proliferate and have been weaponized to great effect by conspiracy theorists, even though recent evidence strongly suggests a natural origin for the virus.

It should therefore be no surprise at all that soon after monkeypox started making the news conspiracy theorists claimed that it had escaped from a laboratory. They even blame the Wuhan Institute of Virology, just as lab leak conspiracy theorists blame the same institute for COVID-19 using similar distortions of science, with Tweets like this:

For instance, two weeks ago The Jimmy Dore Show aired a segment titled Wuhan Lab Was Experimenting On Monkeypox Before Outbreak, while John Campbell, someone who seemed semi-reasonable early on in the pandemic but long ago turned into a total COVID-19 crank, had posted a YouTube video about how the NIH and the WIV had been working on monkeypox, pointing to this NIH grant and a recent paper, Efficient assembly of a large fragment of monkeypox virus genome as a qPCR template using dual-selection based transformation-associated recombination.

As described at FactCheck.org:

Jimmy Dore, a frequent purveyor of misinformation on The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube, produced a segment on July 20 with the headline, Wuhan Lab Was Experimenting On Monkeypox Before Outbreak.

During the segment, Dore showed a video of Dr. John Campbell, a retired nurse educator, discussing monkeypox and the Chinese study.

Campbell says in the video that the National Institute of Health and the Wuhan Institute of Virology were conducting experiments with monkeypox prior to the outbreak and misleadingly suggests viewers may draw some parallels between the origins of the monkeypox outbreak and the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

After playing a clip of Campbell saying the NIH and the Wuhan Institute had been studying monkeypox before the outbreak, Dore asked, What are the odds of that?

Dore continued, whenever theres a new outbreak now, 50/50 chance it was started in the Wuhan Lab funded by Dr. Fauci and the NIH, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Kurt Metzger, a comedian and Dores partner on the show, added, not even a different virology lab accident, the same one.

As I like to say, humans are pattern-forming animals, and were especially good at imputing causation from a pattern when that causation agrees with what we already believe.

I looked up the study, andsurprise!it shows nothing like what Dore and Campbell claim that it shows. First of all, the scientists didnt create a whole monkeypox genome, only a portion of it and then only to use to test a method known as transformation-associated recombination, which is used to assemble large pieces of DNA. Also, the monkeypox sequence used to assemble the partial genome is different from that of the monkeypox virus now circulating. The current outbreak is due to the West African clade virus while the viral sequence used in the research belongs to the Congo Basin clade.

Unsurprisingly, with the war in Ukraine raging, conspiracy theorists promoting pro-Russian narratives claiming that Ukraine had a number of bioweapon labs quickly pivoted to claiming that monkeypox had escaped from a Ukrainian lab, with headlines like ECDC Bombshell: Monkeypox Outbreak Appears To Have Leaked From Ukraine Lab and Tweets like this:

There is, of course, as usual zero evidence to support this claim, which is based on an anonymous source claiming knowledge of what the European Centers For Disease Control has concluded. Lets just put it this way:

Richard Ebright, board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a figure who has voiced lots of support for the COVID lab leak theory, echoed the point. All indications are that the monkeypox outbreak involves a natural monkeypox virus, he told Newsweek.

Ive tangled with Ebright on Twitter before over lab leak conspiracy theories about SARs-CoV-2, and hes a total conspiracy theorist. If he thinks your claim of a lab leak origin for monkeypox is nonsense, youve really wandered far into conspiracyland. The Ukrainian lab leak conspiracy theory is totally fake news, even more ridiculous than the claim that monkeypox came from WIV.

Same as it ever was, though. There is nothing new under the sun, including

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, a documentary called Plandemic went viral. Its primary claim was of a massive conspiracy theory in which the entire pandemic was actually plannedPlandemic, get it?all in order for the global elite to enslave us all with vaccines and pharmaceuticals. It was followed by Plandemic 2, in which Mikki Willis wove a conspiracy theory implicating an October 2019 pandemic preparation exercise held by Johns Hopkins Universitys Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that had envisioned a pandemic due to a fast-spreading coronavirus. The whole narrative involved linking together disparate events in a misleading manner to imply an overarching conspiracy that the current coronavirus pandemic had been planned.

In some cases, the plandemic conspiracy theory got really wild. In one version, it involved aliens teaming up with the global elite to release a two-stage bioweapon (COVID-19 and the vaccine, naturally) to cause global depopulation to about 10% of the current number of humans alive on the planet, all so that the aliens and elite could profit. I kid you not.

Cue May 2022 and monkeypox in the NY Post:

An eerily accurate simulation exercise at the Munich Security Conference in March 2021 centered on a monkeypox outbreak and had the rare and potentially deadly hypothetical disease starting exactly when the real one did.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), a non-profit founded by US media mogul Ted Turner and former Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn, gathered a panel of 19 experts including government officials from the US and China, representatives from the World Health Organization and the UN, and researchers from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and major pharma companies to game out responses to a 12 Monkeys-like bioterror attack.

The fictional scenario, sponsored by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his Open Philanthropies non-profit, hinged on the secret release of a lab-enhanced monkeypox virus that eventually killed 271 million people in a worldwide 19-month pandemic.

Sound familiar? It involves a lot of the same players, in particular includingof course!Bill Gates. The main twist is that this conspiracy theory seems to have originated (or at least spread widely) in China on its social media platform Weibo before making the jump to the West, likely as a response to all the lab leak conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the WIV:

A 2021 report on biosecurity preparedness planning by a US non-government organization, Nuclear Threat Initiative, which included a scenario of a monkeypox pandemic, has been taken out of context to suggest that the US government knew the outbreak was coming.

Nationalist influencer Shu Chang, who has 6.41 million Weibo followers, deliberately misconstrued the report and posted that it showed a plan by the US to leak bioengineered monkeypox virus.

There is, of course, no evidence that this exercise is any indication that the monkeypox outbreak was planned any more than the Johns Hopkins University/Gates Foundation exercise in 2019 was evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was planned. Health experts and authorities plan for pandemics, and when they do they pick scenarios that seem plausible and likely. Given the SARS outbreak 20 years ago, in 2019 a coronavirus seemed most likely as the next big pathogen to cause a pandemic. Monkeypox has been simmering for years and in 2021 seemed like the next viral threat:

The risks posed by monkeypox, according to the NTI, have been well documented for years and cases have been on the increase, making it an obvious virus to choose for this workshop.

Outbreaks of infection are a fact of life, so an organisation predicting and planning for them is not in itself suspicious.

Same as it ever wasagain.

Going back to James Lyons-Weiler and his attempt to blame COVID-19 on a failed attempt to develop a SARS vaccine, I also cant help but add that the very earliest COVID-19 conspiracy theory I encountered, way back in January 2020, was that COVID-19 arose in Wuhan because the Chinese had ordered more influenza vaccines in fall 2019 than they normally would. This conspiracy theory then mutated into a version in which the flu vaccine was falsely blamed for increasing ones chances of getting COVID-19, a claim that persists.

Fast forward to spring and summer 2022, when, to the surprise of no one who has paid attention to antivaccine conspiracy theories over the years, COVID-19 vaccines are being blamed for the monkeypox outbreak, because of course they are. This conspiracy theory tends to take one of two flavors. The first is a claim that the chimpanzee adenovirus vector used in the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine is how monkeypox arose. The second is a more general claim not unlike the conspiracy theories about the flu vaccine and COVID-19 that COVID-19 vaccines weaken the immune system to make people susceptible to monkey pox.

Examples of the first can easily be found on social media:

Molecular biologists, virologists, and others with significant knowledge of molecular biology and virology are likely cringing at how obviously these claims are nonsense (as did I). However, the percentage of the population with sufficient scientific knowledge to immediately recognize these memes and posts as utter bullshit (there is no other word) is, alas, small. So they sound credible. Adenovirus and monkeypox are not just different viruses, theyre very different viruses, and the one used for vaccines is genetically engineered so that it is unable to replicate. Adenovirus-based vaccines use the virus as a tool to induce cells to make the desired antigen, in the case of COVID-19 vaccines the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The only viral proteins made are those absolutely necessary for the vector to serve its purpose of entering cells and forcing them to make the protein from the DNA code inserted into the virus genome. Also, not all of the adenovirus-based vaccines use the chimpanzee version of the adenovirus.

Finally, I particularly like this statement in a more general debunking of this claim:

Meedan added: It should be noted that chimpanzees are not monkeys.

Chimpanzees are from a group of primates known as great apes, see here.

The second version of blaming monkeypox on COVID-19 vaccines posits an immune suppression due to the vaccine that supposedly laid the groundwork for monkeypox to flourish. More recently, antivaxxers have also tried to blame COVID-19 vaccines for polio, but thats a secondary claim:

Antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is pushing this narrative on his Childrens Health Defense website:

Twitter last week censored Shmuel Shapira, M.D., MPH, for suggesting a connection between the monkeypox outbreak and mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, according to a Kanekoas Newsletter Substack post published Wednesday.

Shapira, who said he was injured after receiving his third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, said Twitter demanded he remove a tweet that said:

Monkey pox cases were rare for years. During the last years a single case was documented in Israel. It is well established the mRNA vaccines affect the natural immune system. A monkey pox outbreak following massive covid vaccination: *Is not a coincidence.

Shapira is a full professor of medical administration at Hebrew University and served as director of Israels Institute for Biological Research from 2013-2021.

Again, none of this should come as any surprise to anyone whos followed the antivaccine movement for a long time. The claim that vaccines either suppress the immune system or cause autoimmune disease by cranking it up too muchantivaxxers can never make up their minds and craft their narrative depending on what they want to blame vaccines forare oldie-moldy vaccine tropes.

It turns out that a lot of those claiming that monkeypox arose because COVID-19 vaccines had suppressed the immune systems of those who got them tend to cite two recent papers, one in The Lancet and one in Food and Chemical Toxicology, which they misrepresent as evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause immunosuppression. The second one is easy to deal with. Its by Stephanie Seneff, Greg Nigh, Anthony M. Kyriakopoulos, and Peter A. McCullough, and I discussed it in great detail when it was published in April, also noting that Seneff has been an antivax conspiracy theorist for a long time and that McCullough went full COVID-19 and antivax conspiracy theorist early in the pandemic. Both have been featured multiple times in this very blog, with Seneff having achieved her prominence back in 2015 when she predicted that GMOs would render half of all children autistic by 2025, which is now less than two and a half years away. (Early in the pandemic, she even blamed e-cigs and biofuels for COVID-19.) Lets just say that that review article was an excellent example of Gish galloping and the use of a scientific review article published in a dodgy journal as antivax disinformation.

The first article was indeed published in The Lancet and is a retrospective cohort study from Sweden published in February. Its conclusion was that COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness waned over several months but that effectiveness against severe COVID-19 was better maintained. Thats it. It said nothing about immunosuppression due to the vaccine at all, but that didnt stop Tucker Carlson from finding a comment that falsely claimed that the study did show immunosuppression from the vaccine:

Carlson cited a comment a Japanese physician, Dr. Kenji Yamamoto, published in a different journal, which claimed the Lancet paper showed that immune function among vaccinated individuals 8 months after the administration of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine was lower than that among the unvaccinated individuals.

After suggesting that the Lancet paper hid a major finding, Carlson pointed to one piece of data in table 3 of the paper for viewers to check themselves. Among people around the age of 80 who have been double vaccinated that would include people like Joe Biden the per capita rate of medical incidences, including hospitalizations or death, is nearly twice as high as the rate of serious incidence for the unvaccinated, he said.

Carlson added that the Lancet paper also includes a chart showing negative vaccine efficacy for all ages after eight months for all participants in the study.

Carlson, however, is distorting cherry-picked data from the paper.

The paper we have published [does] not show any of the claims Carlson made, lead author Dr. Peter Nordstrm told us in an email, because they were not statistically significant. The findings that are statistically significant and the conclusions of the paper are presented in the summary of the paper, he added.

Also:

As for the Japanese physician who claimed the Lancet data showed that immune function among vaccinated individuals 8 months after the administration of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine was lower than that among the unvaccinated individuals, Jewell said he found nothing to support that in the Lancet paper, as it also appears to be an erroneous interpretation of figure 2.

Yamamotos comment shows a misunderstanding of the figure, and it also incorrectly generalizes a specific and expected decline in immunity to the coronavirus over time following vaccination with a general decline in immunity to all things. There is no evidence of that in the Lancet paper, nor anywhere else.

This is, of course, a typical antivax technique. They love to cherry pick one line of one figure or table in a paper, especially when its unadjusted data, and misrepresent it to mean what they want it to mean.

Again, same as it ever was.

I had thought about taking just one of the conspiracy theories about monkeypox and doing a deep dive into it, explaining in my usual painful level of detail why its a conspiracy theory. However, as I tried to decide which one to examine, it occurred to me that monkeypox is, as I said at the beginning of this post, an excellent teachable moment to explain again how there is nothing new under the sun in the world of disease and antivaccine conspiracy theories. Just as COVID-19 conspiracy theories were rehashed and repurposed versions of older antivax conspiracy theories, monkeypox conspiracy theories are so rehashed from COVID-19 conspiracy theories that in many cases theyre the same damned conspiracy theory.

The point is this. Once you start seeing the patterns, youll recognize the conspiracy theories. There is nothing new under the sun in antivax conspiracy land (or any conspiracyland, for that matter). It is, as David Byrne once sang, the same as it ever was and Yogi Berra once described as dj vu all over again. Whats different is that these conspiracy theories have far more power and influence than ever before.

Same as it ever was.

Read the rest here:

Conspiracy theories about monkeypox: Dj vu all over again or same as it ever was? - Science Based Medicine

Page 67«..1020..64656667