Faith in God can overcome all obstacles... including COVID-19!

Pastor Tony Harewood

Sunday, August 29, 2021at 6:34 AM

I'm vaccinated and, no, I don't know what's in it - neither this vaccine, the ones I had as a child, nor in the fast foods I eat, or in hot dogs, or in other treatments…whether it's for cancer, AIDS, the one for  polyarthritis, or vaccines for infants or children. I trust my doctor when he says it’s needed. 

I also don't know what's in Ibuprofen, Tylenol, or other meds, it just cures my headaches & my pains...

I don't know what's in the ink for tattoos, vaping, or every ingredient in my soap or shampoo or even deodorants.  I don’t know the long term effect of cell phone use or whether or not that restaurant I just ate at REALLY used clean foods and washed their hands. 

In short...

There's a lot of things I don't know and never will… 

I just know one thing: life is short, very short,  and I still want to do something other than just going to work every day or staying locked in my home. I still want to travel and hug people without fear and find a little feeling of life "before".

As a child and as an adult I've been vaccinated for mumps, measles, rubella, polio, chicken pox, and quite a few others; my parents and I trusted the science and never had to suffer through or transmit any of said diseases... just saying.

You are not vaccinated, I respect your choice,

I am vaccinated, respect my choice...

I'm vaccinated, not to please the government but:

* To not die from Covid-19.

* To NOT clutter a hospital bed if I get sick.

* To hug my loved ones. 

* To Not have to do PCR or antigenic tests to go out dancing, go to a restaurant, go on holidays and many more things to come...

* To live my life.

* To have my kids/grandkids go back to school and play sports. 

* For Covid-19 to be an old memory.

* To protect us.

Source: Tony Harewood | Facebook post

Singapore vaccinates 80 percent of population against COVID-19

With 80 percent of its people fully inoculated against COVID-19, Singapore is now the world’s most vaccinated country, says Reuters.

29 Aug 2021

People older than 70 wait in an observation area after getting a COVID-19 jab at a vaccination centre in Singapore [File: Edgar Su/ Reuters]

Singapore has fully inoculated 80 percent of its 5.7 million people against COVID-19, according to officials, becoming the world’s most vaccinated country and setting the stage for further easing of curbs.

“We have crossed another milestone, where 80% of our population has received their full regimen of two doses,” Singapore’s Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

“It means Singapore has taken another step forward in making ourselves more resilient to COVID-19.”

The development gives the tiny city-state the world’s highest rate of complete vaccinations, according to a tracker by the Reuters news agency.

Other countries that have high vaccination rates include the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Chile, which have fully inoculated more than 70 percent of their populations.

Singapore, which began its vaccination campaign in January, relied mostly on the jabs developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

Visitors wearing masks walk in Merlion Park, a popular tourist spot, with the Marina Bay Sands in the background [File: Annabelle Liang/AP]

Earlier in August, Ong, the health minister said if Singapore can “continue to keep the number of severe cases and illnesses under control and our healthcare capacity is not overly stretched,” then the country will further open up its economy and allow social activities and quarantine-free travel to resume.

“Our lives will be more normal, (and our) livelihoods will be better protected,” he said.

Ong, along with two other cabinet ministers, described what the new normal would look like in an article in the Straits Times in June.

They said large gatherings such as the New Year Countdown will resume and “businesses will have certainty that their operations will not be disrupted”.

Singaporeans will also be allowed to travel again, at least to countries that have also controlled the virus.

“We will recognise each other’s vaccination certificates. Travellers, especially those vaccinated, can get themselves tested before departure and be exempted from quarantine with a negative test upon arrival,” they said.

Singapore has logged a total of 67,171 cases and 55 deaths since the pandemic began. It reported 113 new infections on Saturday.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/29/singapore-vaccinates-80-percent-of-population-against-covid-19?fbclid=IwAR18G7zJiRPvK6rbGNKx3L9lCd1JTjZKNYeV5x35X3kGwQQWF-Cf9GByzGM

‘90% needed’ for herd immunity

Article by Kimberley

POSTED ON AUGUST 28, 2021

CARPHA executive director, Dr Joy St John. (FILE)

With the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus taking hold in more countries across the region, Caribbean countries may now need to attain 90 per cent vaccination in order to achieve herd immunity.

So says executive director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), Dr Joy St John, who explained that the variant was popping up in more territories and was likely to shift the goalpost for some mitigation measures.

“We have the Delta variant, and I need to tell you that the Delta variant is spreading very quickly, to the point that some countries will soon realise that they have community spread. So I want to focus on getting as much vaccinations as possible because studies are showing that with the Delta variant spreading and taking hold and entrenched in the countries, you may now need to get 90 to 95 per cent of the eligible population vaccinated before there is any possibility of those who are not vaccinated [being] protected from the virus,” said St John.

She made the comments during CARPHA’s virtual launch of its Vaccine Acceptance Survey, which captured data from six Caribbean countries, including Barbados. (CLM)

Source: https://www.nationnews.com/2021/08/28/90-needed-herd-immunity/

203 Doctors Told Us What They Actually Think Of COVID Vaccines, And Everyone Should Hear Their Answers

Thu, August 26, 2021, 9:45 PM·3 min read

A growing refrain among vaccine skeptics is that they won't get vaccinated against COVID-19 because a handful of health scientists have told them they don't have to.

Robert Malone, the self-proclaimed inventor of mRNA technology back in the 1980s, has been among those celebrated by the far right for voicing unproven concerns about COVID-19 vaccines to his 280,000-plus Twitter followers.

While it's easy to explain away an embittered, bruised-ego scientist, it's much harder to dismiss the significant majority of healthcare professionals who support the vaccines and the preponderance of evidence backing them up.

Enter the anti-vaxxer's latest unfounded claim: that most public health officials secretly don't support vaccines. In fact, a friend of mine recently made a stunning declaration that she wholeheartedly believes: "Most experts are too afraid to speak up, but I suspect 9 out of 10 doctors would advise against COVID vaccines if you asked them privately."

With that in mind, I began researching epidemiologists, virologists, health department directors, pediatricians, infectious disease experts, and public health officials. I deemed it important to find such people in all 50 states and in counties that leaned both left and right in case politics had tainted anyone's objectivity.

In my research, I identified more than 200 such individuals, and, in the interest of taking up as little of their limited time as possible, decided to ask them all the same two yes or no questions with an invitation to elaborate if they chose to.

My two questions were simply whether they believed the benefits of COVID-19 vaccinations outweigh any potential harms, and whether they'd recommended the shots to their own children if they had any in the 12–18-year-old age groups. Responses began pouring in almost immediately.

Over the next few days, I heard back from 203 of the doctors I'd reached out to. If my friend's unfounded suspicions were correct, 183 of them should have recommended against vaccination.

Turns out the actual number against COVID vaccines was zero. And the number of vaccine experts who recommended the shots to me in our private, one-on-one interactions was a whopping 203.

None of the 203 responders raised a single concern about COVID vaccines for adults or for children. "The benefits outweigh the extremely rare harms by many miles," one biostatistics researcher told me.

What's more, many of the responders had a lot to say about the type of public health official who would use their academic credibility to steer people away from COVID-19 vaccines.

Abner told me she doesn't actually know of any public health officials who have advocated against the vaccines; rather, the handful of fringe persons who have gained notoriety doing so are actually "lab scientists without any public health or epidemiological expertise. Being an expert in one area of science or medicine does not confer expertise in others."

One health department director in Idaho put it even more bluntly: "Any public health official who discourages vaccination isn't concerned about public health at all."

Scouce: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/203-doctors-told-us-actually-014519989.html

I work in a Kansas City emergency room. I know who’s to blame for COVID frustration

BY TASHA MILLER SPECIAL TO THE STAR

AUGUST 26, 2021 05:00 AM

It’s all too easy to let negativity take over during this stressul time. 

JEFF ROBERSON ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

COVID-19 is something we are still learning about. We health care workers are trying to perfect how we respond to it and make people as safe as possible.

I’m not angry at those who aren’t yet vaccinated, and I’m not angry at those who have put so much faith into the vaccine.

Who and what bothers me …

Is the person in the hospital lobby coughing, trying to refuse wearing a mask because “I don’t have COVID. I was tested thee months ago.” (And new test results come back in 30 minutes revealing that the patient is, indeed, positive.)

And the person who says, “If they aren’t vaccinated, they might as well just die. They’re stupid.”

There is so much attitude of superiority on both extremist sides.

I’m not innocent. I’ve caught myself being quite judgmental as well on certain days when traffic in the emergency room is heavy. Then, I sometimes find myself speaking more negativity into the environment than is even close to being helpful.

The enemy isn’t those who are pro-vaccine. The enemy isn’t those who haven’t yet gotten it. The enemy is COVID-19, and those who don’t care or just don’t understand are to be pitied. Not hated or despised.

I understand the frustration of those who are anti-vaccine and those who are pro-vaccine. Both sides’ anger and exasperation come from fear and exhaustion. And maybe even from PTSD.

The important thing is to keep an open mind, to continue to do research and maintain a humble attitude that acknowledges there are things we are still learning about COVID-19, and, I hope, will continue to learn. Maintain a hunger for more understanding, for new information.

Maintain compassion for the fact that so many people are utterly terrified and have suffered loss.

Maintain sympathy for those who are around COVID 24/7 and may be a wee bit grumpy at times.

Maintain humility that says, “I’m not sure I have all the answers, but I will try not to spread the virus personally. And I will do my best to help in this season.”

I do feel blessed to still be alive, breathing without effort and walking around outside in the sunshine.

My disorganized self left my apartment so spick-and-span for the whole first part of the pandemic, just in case I died and my family had to come get my stuff. (I can’t say the same for its current state. I’m not that dedicated long- term, although I should be.)

I’m not saying I couldn’t still suffer a tragedy because of COVID-19 — anything is possible. And I realize that, and appreciate every day every moment that I do have. Every day is a gift, a gift that isn’t really even deserved, to be honest.

I’m not a “hero” for working with COVID patients. I’m lucky to have a job, grateful to have enough masks to wear a new one daily, and thankful to be close to equipment that could possibly help me should I ever become sick and need it.

I’m going to work on checking my attitude more often. Because, as I said, I am very guilty of being crotchety about all of this. I’m pointing the finger at myself, first.

That is all.

Tasha Miller is an emergency room nurse in Kansas City.

Source: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article253736903.html

Ultra-Vaxxed Israel’s Crisis Is a Dire Warning to America

Noga Tarnopolsky

Tue, August 24, 2021, 3:38 AM·6 min read 

JERUSALEM—The massive surge of COVID-19 infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries on earth, is pointing to a complicated path ahead for America.

In June, there were several days with zero new COVID infections in Israel. The country launched its national vaccination campaign in December last year and has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 80 percent of citizens above the age of 12 fully inoculated. COVID, most Israelis thought, had been defeated. All restrictions were lifted and Israelis went back to crowded partying and praying in mask-free venues.

Post-Vaccine Israel Reopens With a Party

Fast forward two months later: Israel reported 9,831 new diagnosed cases on Tuesday, a hairbreadth away from the worst daily figure ever recorded in the country—10,000—at the peak of the third wave. More than 350 people have died of the disease in the first three weeks of August. In a Sunday press conference, the directors of seven public hospitals announced that they could no longer admit any coronavirus patients. With 670 COVID-19 patients requiring critical care, their wards are overflowing and staff are at breaking point.

“I don’t want to frighten you,” coronavirus czar Dr. Salman Zarka told the Israeli parliament this week. “But this is the data. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.”

            Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

What happened?

The complex and sobering truth is that no single policy or event brought Israel to this crisis, Hagai Levine, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of epidemiology, told The Daily Beast. A deadly set of circumstances came together to put Israel on the precipice, most of which can be summed up as: “We are still in the midst of a pandemic, and there is no silver bullet.”

“All the vectors have influenced the rise in morbidity,” he said.

But the principal causes of Israel’s current predicament are the dominance of the extremely infectious Delta variant, which was carried into the country by Israelis returning from foreign vacations during the weeks in which Israel dropped all restrictive measures—along with the worrisome decrease in vaccine efficacy after about six months.

Israel vaccinated its population almost exclusively with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which received full FDA approval on Monday and remains the gold standard for the prevention of severe illness due to the coronavirus.

But in early July, with citizens over the age of 60 almost completely vaccinated, Israeli scientists began observing a worrisome rise in infections—if not in severe illness and death—among the double-vaccinated.

Fully vaccinated people with weakened immune systems appeared particularly vulnerable to the aggressive Delta variant.

By mid-July, Sheba Hospital Professor Galia Rahav began to experiment with booster shots for oncology patients, transplant patients, and the hospital’s own staff. A group of 70 elderly vaccinated Israelis with transplanted kidneys were the first to receive a third dose.

The success of Rahav’s trials in boosting immunity at about the sixth-month mark contributed to the Centers for Disease Control decision, announced last week, to begin offering booster shots to Americans in September.

In order to keep severe illness and the number of COVID deaths down, and avoiding a fourth national lockdown, Israel has embarked on an aggressive effort to provide all adults with boosters in a matter of weeks.

As of this week, all Israelis over 30 will be eligible to receive booster shots. By the end of the month, they are expected to be universally available to anyone over the age of 12 who received their second vaccine five months or more ago.

Israel will then reconfigure its Green Passports, granting them only to the triple-vaccinated, and limiting their validity to six months. In anticipation of this change, the number of unvaccinated Israelis getting their first shots has tripled since the beginning of August.

The World Health Organization has asked wealthy countries to halt all third vaccines for a period of two months, hoping that a moratorium will allow poorer countries, where few citizens have received even a first inoculation, to catch up. The United States rejected the call and Israel has ignored it.

Watch: Ultra-vaccinated Israel's spike in COVID-19 cases serves as warning to U.S.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF0rx3RjGGk

Asked what has brought Israel to peak transmission even as the country has already provided third doses of vaccines to 1.5 million citizens, Rahav, who has become one of the best known faces of Israel’s public health messaging, sighed, saying, “I think we’re dealing with a very nasty virus. This is the main problem—and we’re learning it the hard way.”

“It is a combination of waning immunity, so that inoculated people get reinfected, and at the same time the very transmissible Delta variant,” Rahav said, adding that Israelis lacked the discipline to revert to mask usage as the numbers began rising. “But it is not an Israeli problem,” she added. “It is everywhere.”

Her conclusion should give pause to American authorities, who face school reopenings as, at best, only 50 percent of eligible adults have been fully vaccinated.

Unlike New Zealand, which aims for zero community transmission of the coronavirus, and imposes lockdowns when even a single positive case is identified, Israeli authorities have opted for a model they are calling “living with corona.”

“Israel really is a pioneer,” Levine, the former chairman of the nation’s Association of Public Health Physicians, said, referring to the groundbreaking vaccination campaign and the country’s efforts, currently underway, to fully reopen schools on Sept. 1 while keeping in place measures aimed at preventing school-driven outbreaks, such as the one that closed the nation down last summer.

“We’ve achieved a plan that is not hermetic,” Zarka, the coronavirus czar, told a local radio station. “Clearly there will be cases of illness at schools… [but] shutting oneself up at home and closing the school system isn’t exactly the solution.”

He has asked the government to impose stricter limitations on the size of cultural and sports events until the incidence of the coronavirus declines.

“Each country has to assess its own epidemiology,” Levine said, “its culture, its public health, the public’s confidence in its health authorities.” Referring to New Zealand, he added that “we can all learn from other countries, but you can’t copy paste other countries’ methods.”

Israel was forced to make quick decisions and in a time of great uncertainty. Levine was among the public health officials who expressed doubts about the wisdom of Israel’s untested move towards nationwide booster vaccination, but he told The Daily Beast that the latest statistics, showing that only 0.2 of the first 1.1 million recipients of the third jab were infected with the coronavirus, proved it had been a “brave decision.”

The last week has shown a significant reduction in morbidity among triple-vaccinated Israelis over the age of 70—the first group to receive the booster.

Like the other experts, Rahav supports schools reopening, but noted that thanks to upcoming Jewish holidays, which will close schools in about 80 percent of the country, Israel will once again be uniquely positioned to serve as a huge laboratory.

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/ultra-vaxxed-israel-debacle-dire-073840050.html

Single mum's Covid breach ignites raging debate among Aussies

By ALICE MURPHY and CINDY TRAN FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
PUBLISHED: 07:32 BST, 24 August 2021 | UPDATED: 08:15 BST, 24 August 2021

Exhausted Aussie parents face bitter judgement for sending their kids to school during lockdown: Inside the arguments that are pitting mums against mums

Aussie parents are locked in heated debate about homeschooling in lockdown. Those in NSW and VIC have been ordered to do so unless impossible. But a mum-of-three from Sydney said she refused due to her 'demanding' job. Her decision was slammed as 'entitled' and disrespectful to frontline staff. However some supported her, saying others should walk in her shoes.

Have you faced judgement for your decision?

Exhausted Australian parents face bitter judgement for refusing to homeschool their kids during lockdown, while schools in both NSW and Victoria remain shut as both states battle the Delta outbreak.

A woman recently sparked outrage by revealing she was still sending her children aged 12, 10 and six to school due to her 'very demanding' full-time job, while thousands juggled responsibilities in a bid to quash the latest Covid outbreak.

Greater Sydney's 5.3 million residents have been in lockdown since June 26, as New South Wales continues to record its highest daily cases since the pandemic began in early 2020, notching 753 new infections on Tuesday.

Under current orders from the NSW and Victorian state governments, parents and carers must keep children across primary and secondary school at home unless they cannot learn or cannot be cared for at home.

The mother, who said she tried homeschooling at the start of the coronavirus crisis last year but stopped because it made her feel anxious and binge drink, told Kidspot her kids are happy to be at school while she gets peace, quiet, and time to exercise.

Weeks later her decision is still sending shockwaves through Facebook, with parents slamming it as 'selfish', 'entitled' and disrespectful to essential workers while others defend the mum saying: 'You should walk a mile in her shoes.'

'What entitlement this is,' one woman wrote.

'This isn't someone doing it tough - she has more balance than most in 'normal times'. Getting work done uninterrupted, a walk at lunch, relaxed times with kids?'

She continued: 'This makes me mad - there are people juggling it all and it is so hard, but this is just disrespectful to the school and to others trying to keep it as together as possible.'

Homeschooling rules for Greater Sydney during lockdown

Under current orders from the New South Wales government, parents and carers in Greater Sydney must keep children – across primary and secondary school – at home unless they need to be at school.

Schools and outside of school hours care (OOSHC) services are open for any child that needs it.

All non-core curriculum related activities are to cease on school sites.

Schools should not turn away any student from attending the school site in person. Schools will provide a program of learning for students who attend school, and students who are learning from home.

Students must not attend work or school if unwell, even with mild symptoms of COVID-19. Any person with any COVID-19 symptoms must be sent home and not return to school unless:

• they have isolated for 10 days, when no medical certificate is available
• they have a negative COVID-19 test result and are symptom free

Source: NSW Government

Many echoed the criticism, branding the mother 'selfish' and accusing her of being part of the reason Australia is trapped in an endless cycle of shutdowns.

'This is why lockdown isn't working and cases are still increasing, because people are being selfish,' one woman wrote.

'I'm a single parent too, working from home and home schooling two kids. Why should this parent have the luxury of sending her child to school when others do not have that choice?'

A second called it 'an insult to the rest of us doing the right thing and struggling.'

Meanwhile others got defensive about the education system, with some arguing that teachers should not be put at risk just to make life easier for parents at home.

'The fact is lockdown applies to schools as well,' one woman wrote.

'Schools are open for students who are vulnerable or have both parents leaving the house to work or have a disability. I wish I had time to exercise and start work at my own leisurely pace.'

A second said: 'School is supposed to be for essential workers. The teachers have all been directed to stay at home - remember we have not been prioritised for vaccination and also have families and elderly parents of our own.'

Others said while it would undoubtedly be easier to send kids to school, they have kept them home to comply with official health advice and do their bit to slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant sweeping NSW and Victoria.

'I too work from home. I have a three-year-old, a kindy and one in year 3. Would I love to send my kids to school? You betcha. I have never felt more stress,' one mother wrote.

'I feel like I am failing in all aspects, but I won't send them to school. Why? Because the health advice says otherwise… for a very valid reason.'

Another added: 'Good on you for ignoring the guidance of health authorities so you keep your own personal life easier.'

But some threw support behind the single mother sending her kids in regardless, with one woman urging her to 'do what works for you' and ignore the hate.

'Power to you. I know exactly how you feel,' she wrote.

'I'm a single mum trying to homeschool a special needs child. Those who have responded with angry emojis, shame on you for judging - you have no idea what she's dealing with…walk a mile in her shoes first!'

A second agreed: 'I don't get the hate. She has to do what she has to do, as does everyone else. Don't mum shame, we have enough negativity going around.'

Others felt the fault lay squarely with the state government's handling of the current outbreak.

One man said schools should remain open even for two or three days each week with staggered drop-offs and pick-ups to ease pressure on parents.

'It so hard for parents working from home and then expected to do school. Kid also need the social side of school,' he wrote.

'Our children are suffering and as parents we are mentally drained and exhausted.'

Another said employers have an obligation to be understanding and facilitate staff who are homeschooling while stay-at-home orders remain in place.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9920931/Covid-19-Australia-Parents-locked-debate-single-Sydney-mums-homeschooling-health-breach.html

Dr Pencle notes that getting vaccinated can save you from hospitalization, a trip to the emergency room and even death

The reality for many unvaccinated persons is that they end up hospitalized and many die.
Yesterday as I took my children to get vaccinated, I had a conversation with Dr Franco Pencle, an Accident and Emergency Doctor at the Kingston Public Hospital. pic.twitter.com/O82yPgxZZ2

— Andrew Holness (@AndrewHolnessJM) August 23, 2021

MO dad who gave 7 of his kids COVID: Nurses ‘can’t even stop to clean up the vomit’

BY THE KANSAS CITY STAR EDITORIAL BOARD

AUGUST 24, 2021 05:00 AM

Ben Anderson spent six weeks in the intensive care unit at Research Medical Center after contracting COVID-19. The Brazilian jiujitsu practitioner compares getting a coronavirus vaccine to defending against a competitor. BY MARA' ROSE WILLIAMS

From his Kansas City hospital bed, 42-year-old Ben Anderson, of Cameron, Missouri, has a message for those who, like him, have for whatever reason not yet gotten the COVID-19 vaccine: “These nurses, doctors, are overwhelmed. They are doing the best they can but the emergency rooms are so busy with COVID patients they can’t even stop to clean up the vomit from one patient before they get a code blue and have to run because someone is dying. They are not showing us that on the nightly news. People don’t get it. This is not the sniffles.”

It wasn’t that Anderson was particularly opposed to getting vaccinated. “I wasn’t vaccinated because work was busy,” the software product manager said during an interview in Research Medical Center, where 95% of COVID patients in intensive care unit beds are also unvaccinated. Anderson took frequent breaths, as air seeped through the hole in his neck where a tracheostomy tube had been. “I just never had time.”

Six weeks ago, Anderson lay in an intensive care unit, unconscious and on a ventilator. An end-of-life team at the hospital called his wife Tammy Anderson to discuss removing him from the breathing machine he’d relied on for more than 20 days. 

He knew that COVID had claimed the lives of more than 600,000 people in the U.S. alone. But he thought he was too tough to become one of them.

Days after attending a June 27 gathering in Chillicothe, Missouri, he came down with what seemed like a cold. He was coughing and “in a fog.”

“I went to my room and stayed there,” he said. Anderson remained at home, quarantined from his family for two weeks. Every one of his seven children who are living at home — ages 3 to 18 — became infected with COVID-19, too. The only family member at home who was not ill was his wife. She also was the only family member who’d been vaccinated.

“I never got better. I just kept getting worse,” Anderson recalled. On July 10, Anderson’s wife returned from an errand and found him sitting on the shower floor, unable to stand.

She rushed him to Cameron Regional Medical Center, where doctors eventually said they could do nothing more to help him. That night, an ICU bed opened up at Research.

Anderson was lucky. With the highly transmissible delta variant of COVID-19 surging, hospital intensive care units in the area have been at capacity for weeks. Missouri has a record number of COVID patients in the ICU.

“I don’t understand it,” said Dr. David McKinsey, Anderson’s infectious disease physician, who has been treating critically ill COVID-19 patients since the city’s first reported case of the deadly virus nearly 18 months ago. “Anyone who has chosen not to receive the vaccine is putting themselves at significant risk of acquiring COVID and possibly dying. And they are putting others at risk too. The vaccine is safe.”

Maybe those who would rather take a livestock dewormer they read about on the internet than take expert advice from Dr. McKinsey will listen to Anderson, a martial arts instructor, devout Christian and father of eight.

When Trevor Johnson, 33, heard that Anderson, his martial arts instructor, was hospitalized with COVID, it surprised him. Johnson wasn’t vaccinated either and had no plans to do so, believing the vaccine was developed too fast to be safe.

But when he learned his friend was barely clinging to life, his perspective changed.

Johnson got the first of two vaccination doses the next day. Now he’s telling anyone who asks, “I got mine and you should get it.”

Anderson understands that not getting vaccinated put his family at risk. It frustrates him too, he said, that wearing masks and getting a protective shot in the arm has turned into a political statement. “I can make a statement about my unwillingness to conform, but at what cost? The vaccine clearly is a way to keep us safe. This hole in my neck, the scar anyway, will always be there to remind me of the miracle.”

As “a man of faith,” Anderson’s brush with death, he said, taught him what he wants others, who might be vaccine hesitant or plain untrusting of science, to recognize: “Sometimes miracles come in the form of scientific advancements,” doctors, nurses and yes, vaccines.

Source: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article253675728.html

Hide and jab SOME SECRETLY TAKING COVID- 19 VACCINE AMID CAMPAIGN TO THWART VACCINATIONS

Dr. Joy St John

By Marlon Madden

Published on August 18, 2021

A top regional health official is raising an alarm that there are concerted efforts by some in the Caribbean to dissuade people from taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

Expressing “shock and horror” at the level of false information still being spread regarding the pandemic in an “infodemic” of fake news, Executive Director of Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) Dr Joy St John complained that misinformation was a significant contributor to the existing vaccine hesitancy in the region.

Additionally, she disclosed that some family members, including elderly parents, had to hide and get vaccinated because they were being prevented by other family members from freely doing so.

“I know of people who had to hide to go to get their vaccine because they did not want any ‘noise in the house’,” St John told the 52nd Annual General Assembly of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) on Tuesday.

Dr St John, who was a panelist during the morning session on the final day of the two-day online forum, disclosed that CARPHA had carried out a survey on vaccine hesitancy in member states, which is expected to be released at the end of this month.

“This is part of the reason we did the vaccine hesitancy survey, because we know that there is considerable confusion, not just because people have their own thoughts but there is a concerted campaign to discourage people from being vaccinated and to encourage them to stop, for example, their elderly parents,” she said.

“We have been plagued with the infodemic.

It is an avalanche and it is not just the fact that the science is changing and there is new and correct information all the time. There has been a concerted effort to confuse people – fake news, downright misinformation,” she insisted.

The public health official said the forwarding of “foolish things” via WhatsApp was also contributing to vaccine hesitancy.

“It is a serious issue in the Caribbean,” she said.

“We are lucky we have been receiving vaccines, but for those countries that have vaccines, there is a serious concern about vaccine hesitancy.”

In Barbados, several individuals and groups have been pushing back against any notion of mandatory vaccination, insisting that there should be freedom of choice. Others have labelled the COVID-19 vaccines experimental, while some expressed distrust of the jabs.

Dr St John, who opted not to disclose the findings of the survey, said it was carried out to, among other things, find out the impact misinformation has had on people’s decision regarding COVID-19 vaccination.

Pointing out that the main medium for the spread of half-truths was social media, St John said CARPHA has been putting various measures in place to help prevent misinformation from getting through.

She told the CBU forum that media practitioners also had a very important role to play in stemming the spread of misinformation, warning that the sources of information should be vetted before dissemination.

“The media has a very important role, not just motivation, but countering dangerous groups, helping audience members to stay healthy and helping to reduce stigma towards people affected by COVID-19,” she added.

Stating that the impact of the pandemic on the region’s health system has been immense, St John said while CARPHA member states have been making every effort to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, the new Delta variant is presenting more challenges.

Using Trinidad and Tobago as an example, she explained that one of the challenges there was that the majority of people who have been in intensive care or have died as a result of COVID-19, were unvaccinated.

“Even the partially vaccinated are in this representation. But the take-home message is that the fully vaccinated are protected.

So, it is going to be very important that we use your good office to ensure that people understand that the right choice is to be fully vaccinated and the wrong choice is to listen to misinformation and to actively stop others from being vaccinated,” said Dr St John.

She added that in order to help with combatting vaccine hesitancy, it was important that employers first find out why some people were unsure about getting the jab and provide a forum for them to have their concerns addressed.

“You try to find out and you try to do one-on-ones with your most reluctant staff members. The one-on-one is usually with someone they trust, and that is something else we found out in the vaccine hesitancy survey.

Who do they trust? They trust international health experts and organizations such as CARPHA and they also trust their local health providers.

“So, you try to create situations where even if it is not one-on-one, they have a chance to ask questions of whomever, and what is their preferred medium,” she explained.

(marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb)

Source: https://barbadostoday.bb/2021/08/18/some-secretly-taking-covid-19-vaccine-amid-campaign-to-thwart-vaccinations/

CDC study shows three-fourths of people infected in Massachusetts coronavirus outbreak were vaccinated but few required hospitalization

Commercial Street in Provincetown, Mass., on July 24. (Craig F. Walker/Boston Globe/Getty Images)

By

Carolyn Y. Johnson

, 

Yasmeen Abutaleb

 and 

Joel Achenbach

 

July 30, 2021 at 6:35 p.m. EDT

A sobering scientific analysis published Friday found that three-quarters of the people infected during an explosive coronavirus outbreak fueled by the delta variant were fully vaccinated. The report on the Massachusetts cases, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, offers key evidence bolstering the hypothesis that vaccinated people can spread the more transmissible variant and may be a factor in the summer surge of infections.

The data, detailed in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, helped persuade agency scientists to reverse recommendations on mask-wearing and advise that vaccinated individuals wear masks in indoor public settings in some circumstances.

Critically, the study found that vaccinated individuals carried as much virus in their noses as unvaccinated individuals, strongly suggesting that vaccinated people could spread the virus to others. The CDC was criticized this week for changing its mask guidance without publishing the data it relied on. The report released Friday contains some of that data.

“This finding is concerning and was a pivotal discovery leading to CDC’s updated mask recommendation,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. “The masking recommendation was updated to ensure the vaccinated public would not unknowingly transmit virus to others, including their unvaccinated or immunocompromised loved ones.”

The outbreak started in early July in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, a tourist destination known for its party scene. The July Fourth holiday atmosphere proved ideal for superspreader events.

The new research and the reversal in the masking guidance put the public in an uncertain position as August and a new school year approaches. Risk calculations have never been easy in this pandemic, and the viral environment just got murkier.

Scientists said the Provincetown outbreak and other recent data on breakthrough infections make clear that vaccines offer significant protection, as they were designed to, against severe illness and death but do not offer blanket protection against any chance of infection. Only a handful of people in the outbreak were hospitalized. While the data suggests that vaccinated people can spread the disease, the extent to which they contribute is not yet clear. Walensky said this week that such transmission occurs on “rare occasions.”

A CDC internal document obtained by The Washington Post estimated that 35,000 vaccinated people a week in the United States are having symptomatic breakthrough infections, out of a vaccinated population of more than 162 million. Vaccination coverage is higher than average in Massachusetts, with nearly 70 percent of residents fully vaccinated.

“This shows the delta is formidable,” said Larry Corey, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “We can’t take one report of packed bars and extrapolate and say the sky is falling. The sky is not falling. But it does say the vaccine is not infallible.”

“Common sense has to be used,” Corey said. “It’s a learning moment. It’s a teaching moment. You can’t overlook the vast data we have on the effectiveness of the vaccine.”

Corey and other scientists reiterated that vaccination is the best way to end the pandemic. Turning covid-19 into a nuisance cold instead of a potentially fatal pneumonia was the main goal of the shots.

“People should be reassured that if they are fully vaccinated that they are very likely, highly likely, to be protected against severe or critical illness, the kind of illness that would cause them to be hospitalized or killed by this virus,” said Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Vaccines save your life.”

But the CDC has been grappling with how to communicate to the public about infections able to break through vaccine’s protection, acknowledging they happen more frequently than many people anticipated, although illness tends to be mild. The study’s authors note that Massachusetts has a high vaccination rate and yet the virus was still able to spread.

“Findings from this investigation suggest that even jurisdictions without substantial or high COVID-19 transmission might consider expanding prevention strategies, including masking in indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status,” they write.

Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, noted that the new CDC guidance on indoor masking for vaccinated people applies to communities with substantial transmission. That criterion would not have included Provincetown, which, according to the CDC report, had no reported new cases on July 3.

“What this tells us is we need much more context and better data to guide whether and when vaccinated people should wear masks, because following CDC’s new guidance wouldn’t have stopped this outbreak from occurring,” Nuzzo said.

Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, warned that these flare-ups of infections could become a persistent challenge as people move around, even to highly vaccinated areas.

“Everyone was looking forward to a fun, vaccinated summer,” Dean said. “Unfortunately, with the delta variant, we are having to recalibrate what we can do and still keep people safe. This outbreak happened despite highly effective vaccines.”

The internal CDC document, which The Post published Thursday, states that the delta variant is as transmissible as chickenpox and is likely to cause more-severe infections than past variants. That document also shows the CDC believes it needs to revamp its public communications strategy to stress the importance of vaccinations as the best way to crush the pandemic while acknowledging that breakthrough infections are more common than top health officials have indicated.

The Provincetown outbreak has all the hallmarks of a superspreader event, with infected people reporting to public health officials that they gathered in “densely packed indoor and outdoor events that included bars, restaurants, guest houses and rental homes,” according to Friday’s CDC report. The full outbreak, which began over the July Fourth holiday weekend, is close to 900 cases, but the analysis included only a subset of 469 cases.

About three-quarters of infections occurred in people who were fully vaccinated, and that group had received Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

Scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a research institute in Cambridge, Mass., that was involved in the genetic analysis of the outbreak, highlighted that this was not a single event. At least five events sparked the outbreak, so it is not possible to blame it on one party or one bar.

“There’s no one person or spot to blame here,” said Daniel Park, group leader for viral computational genomics at the Broad Institute. “The thing that’s catching the attention in national public health is that … a decently high vaccination rate isn’t quite enough” to stop an outbreak with so people in one place and the delta variant spreading.

The scientists, along with officials at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, reported that 79 percent of the breakthrough infections were symptomatic. Four of five people who were hospitalized were fully vaccinated.

They are now analyzing the genetic fingerprints of the virus samples taken to trace chains of transmission and determine how commonly fully vaccinated people were infecting one another. The presence of similar amounts of virus in the noses of vaccinated and unvaccinated people raises the possibility they are both contributing to spread, but many scientists think that vaccinated people should be less likely to spread the virus.

Similar findings may be emerging from other locations. The internal CDC document showed that national surveillance found that vaccinated people had larger amounts of virus in their nose when infected with the delta variant, compared with other variants.

A report of cases from mid-July in Dane County, Wis., found a similar result, showing that fully vaccinated people had viral loads similar to those of unvaccinated people “and may be more capable of spreading COVID than was previously known.” The Wisconsin data showed that unvaccinated people were twice as likely to be infected as fully vaccinated people.

The CDC study “raises the very worrisome possibility that high viral loads can occur in people who have delta, and this is a fundamental as we have to approach the fall and winter,” said David O’Connor, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

While vaccines remain highly protective against the worst outcomes, the new data may have implications for herd immunity, the threshold at which there is enough immunity to stifle community spread.

“Although most cases were not hospitalized, thus showing the vaccine works in an important way, this study is portentous for the achievement of herd immunity,” Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, said in an email. “If the vaccinated can become infected (and, we believe, from other studies, potentially spread covid), then herd immunity becomes more of a mirage than oasis.”

It also may intensify the debate about when and how long to implement mask guidance. The new study, as well as the internal CDC document obtained by The Post, both suggested that universal masking may be necessary to help stop spread of the virus. But the mask guidance issued this week said only that people need to use masks under certain circumstances, including high levels of virus in the community.

“We are at an inflection point,” said Pardis Sabeti, a geneticist at the Broad Institute and Harvard University. “I’d say we are in a moment right now — a crossroads, a fork in the road where we can either try and take a road to end the pandemic or take a path that will prolong it.”

The study makes clear that vaccines offer significant protection but do not prevent infection entirely, even among the fully vaccinated. On July 3, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported a 14-day average of zero coronavirus cases per 100,000 in Barnstable County. By July 17, that number had increased to 177 cases per 100,000.

“This report demonstrates that vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 is not perfect, particularly in a setting with a highly contagious variant, in a large group in close contact, even if most are vaccinated against the virus,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health. “The good news here: If you’re vaccinated, refrain from large group gatherings and mask up, chances are good you’ll be okay. This is not 2020. But we’re not out of the woods.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/30/provincetown-covid-outbreak-vaccinated/

View source document for newspaper article below.

Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Infections, Including COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections, Associated with Large Public Gatherings — Barnstable County, Massachusetts, July 2021

Weekly / August 6, 2021 / 70(31);1059-1062

On July 30, 2021, this report was posted online as an MMWR Early Release.

Link: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm7031e2_w

Iceland has been a vaccination success. Why is it seeing a coronavirus surge?

A view of downtown Reykjavik in Iceland. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By

Reis Thebault

August 15, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

What happened to Iceland?

The island nation that has been praised for its coronavirus response and its world-leading vaccination rate is now seeing its highest levels of infection since the start of the pandemic.

Just one month after the government scrapped all covid-19 restrictions, masks, social distancing and capacity limits have returned. And U.S. authorities last week warned Americans to stay away.

Vaccine opponents have gleefully pointed to Iceland as proof that the shots are a “failure.” But contrary to online misinformation and conspiratorial social media posts, infectious-disease experts say Iceland’s outbreak actually illustrates how effective the vaccines are at preventing the virus’s most severe impacts.

Many of the country’s recent infections have occurred among vaccinated people, but they’ve been overwhelmingly mild. So even as new cases multiplied, Iceland’s rates of covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths have remained low. Of the 1,300 people currently infected, just 2 percent are in the hospital. The country hasn’t recorded a virus death since late May.

Iceland, the experts say, is providing valuable information about breakthrough infections in the fully inoculated. Yet it also remains a vaccine success story.

Without vaccines, Iceland’s outbreak “would be catastrophic,” said Pall Matthiasson, chief executive of the country’s largest hospital.

The evidence from Iceland comes at a precarious point in the pandemic. The more contagious delta variant is fueling rising cases in countries that have barely begun to vaccinate their populations, as well as in countries where the pace of inoculation is leveling off. Even highly vaccinated communities have been surprised to find themselves becoming virus hot spots.

Iceland stands out as one of the world’s most vaccinated countries, with nearly 71 percent of its population fully inoculated, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. With fewer than 360,000 residents and a nationalized universal health-care system, the country was able to quickly distribute vaccines when the first doses arrived in the final days of last year, and inoculation continued at a rapid pace.

Iceland has also had a sophisticated system for testing, tracing and sequencing the virus since early in the pandemic. That surveillance — the result of a partnership between Iceland’s health department and the Reykjavik-based human genomics company deCODE — led to some of the first important revelations about the way the virus spreads, including that many infected people have no symptoms and that children were less likely than adults to get sick. It continues to provide Iceland a clear picture of what it is facing, in contrast to a country like the United States, which is testing a far smaller share of its population.

Iceland’s leaders thought the country was in a good position when they made a triumphant announcement at the end of June: no more masks, distancing, limits on gatherings or operating hours, and no testing for vaccinated travelers.

“We are regaining the kind of society which we feel normal to live in and we have longed for,” Svandis Svavarsdottir, the minister of health, said at the time.

Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir added: “The situation here is among the best in the world.”

Iceland Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir. (Michael Sohn/AP)

Less than a month later, however, the number of new cases shot up — and kept rising.

The country’s top health officials linked most of the cases to nightclubs and to residents who traveled to London to attend Euro 2020 soccer matches that some warned would be “a recipe for disaster.”

On June 25, Iceland had recorded just 1.6 new infections per 100,000 people over the previous 14 days. As of Thursday, that number had risen to more than 421, far higher than the country’s previous waves.

The absolute numbers are still relatively small, but Iceland’s tiny population and low starting point make the recent increase appear particularly sharp.

Adjusted for population, both Iceland and the United States are reporting new cases at clips that rank among the top two dozen countries in the world, but the United States probably has many more infections that are going undetected, because of lower rates of testing.

Iceland quickly became a go-to talking point for the anti-vaccine movement. Fox News’s Laura Ingraham aired a segment in which a guest posited that “it’s almost as if the vaccine invited this explosion of cases” in Iceland.

Such observations are false, said Philip J. Landrigan, an epidemiologist and the director of Boston College’s Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good. They omit the fact that the vaccines are “providing almost absolute protection against death,” he said.

The Iceland outbreak shouldn’t be surprising, Landrigan added. When a high percentage of the population is vaccinated, it’s more likely that the people who test positive are inoculated.

“We’ve seen in many places the so-called breakthrough cases, but invariably the rate of serious disease and death is exceedingly low, and that really is the core message here,” he said.

People at a Reykjavik bar in May. Iceland reinstated some coronavirus restrictions at the end of July. (Haraldur Gudjonsson/AFP/Getty Images)

Matthiasson, the Icelandic hospital chief executive, said he had not expected this latest upswing in cases, especially when it seemed the country had vanquished the virus.

His hospital has been stretched thin, even though it only treats two to three dozen covid-19 patients at once, because it always operates near capacity.

Of the 65 virus patients admitted during this wave, he said, 40 percent are unvaccinated — more than four times the overall share of unvaccinated Icelanders.

The data is clear, Matthiasson said: “Being vaccinated reduces the likelihood of admission manyfold.”

Iceland is also set to become an early test of booster vaccinations. The majority of residents received a two-dose regimen of an mRNA vaccine, mostly the Pfizer shots, but the 53,000 who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson jab should get an additional shot at least eight weeks later, authorities announced.

Like the real-world case of Provincetown, Mass., what’s happening in Iceland makes a strong case for continuing targeted mitigation measures, said Brandon Guthrie, an epidemiologist and global health professor at the University of Washington.

The government of Iceland has reinstated mask requirements for some indoor spaces and a 200-person capacity limit, which will both be in place until at least the last week of August. The measures took effect in late July, and the rise of new infections appears to have slowed in recent days.

The case of Iceland should also reframe the idea of a successful public health campaign, Guthrie said.

“We’ve handicapped ourselves in what the definition of success is,” he said. Scientists originally hoped for vaccines that were 50 percent effective, he said, and the goal was to prevent death and severe disease — not to provide blanket protection against any chance of infection.

“The goal line has been shifted here because they are so effective, especially with the earlier variants,” Guthrie said. “Having few deaths or severe cases of illness in the context of large surges should absolutely be seen as at least a partial victory.”

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/iceland-covid-surge-vaccines/2021/08/14/bdd88d04-fabd-11eb-911c-524bc8b68f17_story.html