The CDC’s most recent weekly vaccination update says that “receipt of the COVID-19 vaccine is low across all socio-demographic subgroups and has consistently varied by age, race and ethnicity, poverty status, health insurance status, and urbanicity.” As of December 2, fewer than 18% of adults reported getting the updated COVID-19 vaccine since Sept. 14, and about another 15% of adults said they would “definitely” get vaccinated.
RSV — respiratory syncytial virus infection — is another one of those bugs that poses its most serious risk to the 60-and-over crowd. Although a serious RSV infection might require hospitalization, the uptake rate among the eligible 60-plus cohort is just 16%.
Vaccinations for the ordinary flu are down a bit, too. “Adult vaccination rates for influenza reached their peak for the 2020-2021 cycle,” the Washington Examiner reported on Monday, “with 50.2% of those over 18 getting vaccinated. For the 2022-2023 season, however, only 46.9% of the same population obtained their shot.” Rates are expected to be about the same or lower for the 2023-2024 flu season.
The drop isn’t huge, but the trendline is clear: Americans don’t seem to be all that worried about the flu — and aren’t concerned at all about COVID or RSV.
That’s not for any lack of effort on the part of our public health system.
The CDC began its big vaccination push over two months ago with this tragically hip tweet from CDC director Mandy Cohen.
Fetch? Retch!
Whatever your opinion about the safety or efficacy of this or that vaccine, we can all agree that seeing a 44-year-old medical doctor/public health official try to be hip is painfully cringeworthy. Besides, as any “Mean Girls” fan could tell you, “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen! It’s not going to happen!”
Chicago health officials took a more traditional (and much less wince-inducing) approach on Monday, with Dr. Colleen Nash, associate professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Rush University Medical Center, warning, “We’ve now been lucky enough to kind of live with COVID but still enjoy normal life and activities and things. And that is directly attributable, at least in part, to vaccinations. So I would really encourage people to do that if they haven’t already.”
While reports show that Illinois’ hospitalization rate for COVID is “ticking up,” the actual numbers aren’t anything like 2020, with an additional 1,251 COVID hospital admissions this week statewide. And yet, according to the Chicago Tribune, only about 11% of city residents are fully current on their COVID-19 vaccinations.
The CDC tried on Twitter/X again on Saturday, reminding readers, “‘Tis the season for joy and family. Now is the time to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and flu before you see your loved ones again.”
While the replies were all over the place in tone, this one reasonable-sounding tweet captured the general sentiment.
When vaccination rates are down even for the innocuous (and generally trusted) flu shot, it’s clear that the CDC no longer enjoys the clout it used to with the American public.
On a personal note, I’ve done everything a columnist can do to keep this piece 100% evenhanded. The only strong opinion expressed here was a joking one about Dr. Cohen’s use of “fetch” in her October 4 tweet.
More proof that masks don’t work. Especially on children. How many times do we have to show proof? I guess some folks will never believe and they will continue to follow the Faucci school of lies.
A new systematic review by Sandlund et alpublished in BMJ’s Archives of Diseases in Childhood shows that public health officials were wrong to mandate masks for children due to an absence of high quality evidence.
Here’s just a bit of that report.
Results We screened 597 studies and included 22 in the final analysis. There were no randomised controlled trials in children assessing the benefits of mask wearing to reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection or transmission. The six observational studies reporting an association between child masking and lower infection rate or antibody seropositivity had critical (n=5) or serious (n=1) risk of bias; all six were potentially confounded by important differences between masked and unmasked groups and two were shown to have non-significant results when reanalysed. Sixteen other observational studies found no association between mask wearing and infection or transmission.
Conclusions Real-world effectiveness of child mask mandates against SARS-CoV-2 transmission or infection has not been demonstrated with high-quality evidence. The current body of scientific data does not support masking children for protection against COVID-19.
We all know that the main side effects are hospitalization, and sometimes death. The true numbers may never be released, but hopefully people will contimue to tell their story.
WHO, CDC, FDA, and the NIH, You have no one to blame but yourself. Now as we enter what’s called the cold and flu season, the four organizations that have given us a renewal of the little chicken sky is falling.
Ever since 2020 these organizations have been all over the map with what to do or how to do things when it comes to COVID. Tony the Fauch was the ringleader in all of this.
Now we’re hearing about this new Chineese virus that again has the world in a panic Some say that the recent cases of this virus is what showed up in Ohio and Massachutes.
Of course China and the CDC are saying that it’s just a case of ‘white lung syndrome’. Now this virus is attacking mostly children. Anyone seeing another lockdown?
*Ohio has reported 142 cases in one county alone. Massachusetts hasn’t quantified them officially, but one doctor reported it as “a whole lot” of cases.
Experts say a mixture of several seasonal bacterial and viral bugs are hitting at once, putting pressure on hospitals.
A mystery outbreak of pneumonia has hit several parts of China, and now Ohio is the first American location to report an outbreak of the illness, with an ‘extremely high’ number of children being hospitalized.
The strain of pneumonia, now dubbed ‘white lung syndrome,’ has spawned 142 pediatric cases in Warren County since August.
Warren County Health Department said that not only is the number of cases above average, but it also meets the Ohio Department of Health’s definition of an outbreak.
This highlights the two locations where rises in pneumonia cases in children have been reported in the US so far. They are Warren County, Ohio, and East Longmeadow, in Massachusetts
Meanwhile, in western Massachusetts, physicians are seeing ‘a whole lot’ of walking pneumonia, a milder form of the lung condition, which is caused by a mixture of bacterial and viral infections.
Neither outbreak is being caused by a novel pathogen and not all of the pneumonia cases are being caused by the same infection. Experts say a mixture of several seasonal bacterial and viral bugs are hitting at once, putting pressure on hospitals.
SIDE NOTE: A recent ruling by a New York state appeals court effectively upheld the right of state officials to arbitrarily seize and detain pretty much any person they deem necessary.
And, of course, it’s in the name of public safety.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that nationally, cases are not out of the ordinary, but the spread of cases has raised fears that an outbreak can overwhelm American hospitals.
Dr Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said: ‘I would caution against extrapolating one Ohio county to a country of 330million people.’
But he would not be entirely surprised if ‘some places in the US are above baseline’ this year, as it appears several bacterial and viral infections are rebounding post-Covid.
Officials in Ohio say that an investigation is ‘ongoing,’ but the illness does not look like a new disease, but rather several common infections hitting all at once.
Does anyone else find this suspicious? — TPR
According to the news outlet, so far, patients have tested positive for mycoplasma pneumonia, a bacterial lung infection that is mostly resistant to antibiotics, strep, and normally benign infection, adenovirus.
The ages of the patients range from 8 to 3, and there are several theories as to why children are more susceptible to the illness. Some suggest it is caused by lockdowns that have weakened the immune system or mask-wearing and school closures leaving children vulnerable during seasonal illnesses.
It is reported that bacterial respiratory infections usually flare up every few years, normally as people recover from waves of flu or other viral illnesses.
The Warren County Health District officials said that they believe the pneumonia cases are a large uptick of cases normally seen at one time rather than a new respiratory disease.
Officials also want to remind the public to take necessary precautions to protect their health, as many of us will be gathering with friends and family during the holiday season.
Doctors say the most common symptoms are fever, cough, and fatigue. Hand washing, covering your mouth when you cough, and staying up-to-date on vaccines will help decrease your chance of illness.
According to the news report, the county was first alerted to the increase in illnesses after schools were recording more children off sick than normal.
Ohio is not the only area outside of China to report an outbreak. The Netherlands and Denmark are also reported to have mysterious spikes in ‘walking pneumonia’ cases, most common in younger children.
The above image pictures the lungs during ‘white lung syndrome’ or acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is diagnosed via the white spots or opaque areas appearing in the lungs. The above patient was a 57-year-old man in 2014
It is unclear if any deaths have resulted from the illness and officials have not responded to requests for more information.
In Massachusetts, doctors say the main issue is RSV, a respiratory virus that kills more than 10,000 Americans each year, mostly young children and the elderly.
Dr Adalja believes the pneumonia outbreaks cropping up around the world could be due to the ‘cyclical’ nature of mycoplasma.
Mycoplasma goes through epidemic cycles every few years and that may be what’s occurring globally at the moment.’
He said China may be getting hit by a double-whammy of viral and bacterial infections. China is entering its first winter without pandemic restrictions and is reporting surges in Covid, flu, and RSV as well as mycoplasma.
The US, Canada and Europe — where Covid restrictions were lifted earlier — were hit by massive upswings in those viruses last year.
‘So what’s happening in China makes sense’, Dr Adalja said, adding: ‘Last year we were dominated by so much Covid, flu and RSV when we opened up.’
He said he thinks this year’s winter outbreak will be ‘less severe’ that last year’s, when thousands of children were hospitalized with RSV and flu.
If this is true, why didn’t we hear more about it last year? — TPR
But Dr Adalja admitted that lockdowns have contributed to the emerging global phenomenon.
“When children are born they haven’t experienced any infectious diseases so more of them you have in population so lower threshold for outbreak to start.
“That group of children born provide new people for illnesses. The pandemic allowed the number of these susceptible people to build up over the years.”
Mycoplasma pneumonia normally causes a mild flu-like illness, sometimes called ‘walking pneumonia’. Cases are most common in younger children.
Some antibiotics, such as penicillin, have no effect.
Strep also normally causes a mild illness and tends to leave patients with sore throats. It’s more common among those aged five to 15 years old.
And adenovirus, which has also been detected in patients in Ohio, causes symptoms similar to the common cold.
Dr Scott Roberts, an infectious diseases expert at Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut, said the uptick in cases was likely still being driven by weakened immunity in children.
“This is probably a recurrence of known pathogens that are hitting us a bit harder because of low immunity to them.”
He suggested children’s immune systems could still be suffering from the effects of Covid restrictions which blocked their exposure to ‘good germs’ for building immunity. He also pointed out that immunity wanes over time.
It comes after the Netherlands and Denmark also said they were recording mysterious spikes in pneumonia cases, many of which are being attributed in part to mycoplasma.
China has been recording a surge in childhood cases of pneumonia since May which only came to light LAST MONTH.
Naw, there’s nothing suspicious about this new outbreak, is there? — TPR
by https://www.breitbart.com/author/heartbeatinternational/
Proof that Progressives aren’t prochoice. The State of California Attacks a Woman’s Right to Choose Life. I’ve always said that the left is supported of killing babies as long as it isn’t their or their family member.
The comeback has always been that being prochoice means that they at times will choose life. Not in California it isn’t. What these folks are doing is sickening. We have this from Heartbeat International.
In May 2020, Kayla initiated a chemical abortion, only to be haunted by a moment of hesitation — a “still small voice.” That voice, barely audible, guided her to reconsider.
Fueled by determination, Kayla turned to Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Reversal website, connecting her with compassionate healthcare professionals who guided her through the reversal protocol, which ultimately saved her daughter Serenity’s life.
The AG’S lawsuit seeks to halt the use of the lifesaving procedure used to save the baby’s life.
Progressive writer attacks a child in the name of WOKE. Yes the left has no shame a no name writer tweeted part of a childs face showing what this writer called racism and somehow connected it as derrogatory towards Native Americans and Blacks. Because of that child the KC Chiefs must stop using an Indian name.
Deadspin writer Carron Phillips smeared an innocent child who attended Sunday’s Kansas City vs Las Vegas game by posting a deceptive photo of only one side of his face.
“It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once. But on Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, a Kansas City Chiefs fan found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time.” Carron Phillips wrote.
Hamas terrorists stand by vehicles as they hand over hostages who were abducted during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as part of a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel amid a temporary truce, in an unknown location in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, on Nov. 26, 2023. (Hamas Military Wing/Handout via Reuters)
By Roger L. Simon for EPOCH TIMES 11/27/2023
Yes, it’s sad that Israel must finish off Hamas, no matter what.
Innocent Gazans will die, particularly children.
But they have no choice.
Many of the adults, however, may not be so innocent. They’re people who elected to remain in Gaza under Hamas rule, despite the regime’s brutality equaling the worst in human history, while others sensibly fled.
The horrifying story of Hamas’s methods in overcoming the Palestinian Authority in Gaza in 2007, only two years after the territory was given freely to the Palestinians by Israel for their own rule, is a harrowing narrative worth reading. That they threw each other off 15-story roofs is but one harbinger of the Oct. 7 atrocities including rapes and the parading of victims, the murdering and abducting of babies, and so forth.
That most Arab nations don’t want these people for whom violence is a way of life within their borders is not surprising.
That LGBT folks have joined the pro-Hamas demonstrations without realizing what would happen to them under the terrorist’s rule is the darkest of comedy.
That some supposed conservatives see moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel would be laughable were it not so dangerous. Certainly, it’s a display of massive ignorance.
With the prisoner–hostage swap in progress, the efforts of the left and the United Nations, among others, to push Israel into a permanent cease-fire will undoubtedly redouble.
The U.N. is particularly hypocritical, or worse, in this regard. Little is more repellent than their longtime complicity, through their United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), with Hamas and other extremist organizations. They have literally ignored the use of human shields, the misuse of construction materials for terror tunnels, and similar abhorrent desecrations of human rights for well over a decade for the most malign and selfish of reasons—among them, if there were no more Palestinian refugees there would be no need for a UNRWA.
The U.N.’s other off-shoot, the World Health Organization (WHO) that we know from their obeisance to China during COVID-19, has been curiously silent about the use of hospitals for weapons storage, missile launching, those same tunnels, and even command and control headquarters by Hamas. (The director of Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in Gaza, is under interrogation by Israel at this moment about this.)
These are the people who will be clamoring for a cease-fire, the very thing Hamas wants so they can regroup and attack again.
The terrorist organization makes no secret they wish to do this. It’s in the genocidal chant we hear everywhere from Los Angeles to London: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
When I say genocidal, I mean really genocidal. In Paris in the late eighties, just after Hamas was formed, I saw one of their early demonstrations at which they chanted “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas!” in English and French.
Clear enough?
The good news in all this is that Hamas is finally on the run. We can see this, as the Times of Israel has pointed out, from the nature and timing of the prisoner–hostage exchange. Normally, Hamas asks for a far greater imbalance with a huge number of real terrorists released, as in the case of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Hamas for five years.
Not this time. Hamas, in an unusual hurry for a pause, was willing to exchange for women and young prisoners, and fewer of them.
This is a sign that Hamas, which surprised the Israelis on Oct. 7, has been surprised themselves by the force of the Israeli response. They expected the usual three- or four-day counterattack when the Israelis, under global admonition to be “proportionate,” would relent and all would go back to the status quo ante.
Not this time again. Hamas leadership made a serious miscalculation, and Israel shows no sign of backing off. They have apparently had enough of carping from Western nations. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made clear on the eve of the temporary truce that the Israel Defense Force will resume fighting “with intensity” for at least two months.
The way things have been going, that would seem sufficient to achieve the fate for Hamas that has already been achieved for its “semblable” ISIS.
It’s hard to know, after that, where things will go for the once-vaunted two-state solution. For some time, the Palestinians haven’t seemed really to want one. In 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinian Authority 97 percent of what they said they wanted, and their leader Mahmoud Abbas walked away.
But you never know. Real power, properly applied, has the ability to change minds.
What we really should do is ask how it came to pass that Hamas got to accrue such an incredible and seemingly endless arsenal of weaponry, not to mention the funds for their leadership to enjoy the lifestyle of billionaires in luxury hotel suites in Turkey and Qatar while flying about in private jets?
The answer, alas, to some degree points to us.
Yes, most of those funds came via Iran, aka the “world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism,” with an assist from the aforementioned Qatar.
But where did and does Iran get its money to wreak havoc across the Middle East and potentially beyond?
To be blunt, I recommend asking Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They’re the ones who relaxed sanctions on Iran to the tune of billions and billions.
As for Israel, there’s no such thing as being “proportionate” when it comes to conquering evil.
For thee not me. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images
Winning. Only 14% of Americans get the latest jab. If you want or did get the latest jab, that’s fine. But don’t come crying when you get side effects, hospitalization, and of course death (of course it’s too late then).
The loons over at VOX call it a miracle drug. But what they and the CDC leave out is that since the so called miracle drugs arrived, more Vaccinated folks are getting COVID, Hospitalized, and dying.
