Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr as US secretary of health and human services has prompted widespread criticisms towards Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist who has embraced a slew of other debunked health-related conspiracy theories.
Comments closedTag: United States
Topic: Trump regimeView all posts for the topic: Trump regime
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a long record of promoting anti-vaccine views
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was building up a following with his anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, and becoming one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines.
Now, President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which regulates vaccines.
Comments closedTopic: Trump regimeView all posts for the topic: Trump regime
Experts Share What Another Trump Presidency Could Mean For Your Health
Comments closedDuring his last time in office, Trump botched the pandemic response, he spread misinformation everywhere, he contributed to restricting access to reproductive health care, he tried to repeal [the Affordable Care Act] and he set the world back on climate action. For me, it’s extremely worrying to have someone in charge with such a poor track record on health and science.
Topic: anti-vaxxersView all posts for the topic: anti-vaxxers
RFK Jr. is crowdsourcing reams of nominees for Trump’s health administration
Between now and Inauguration Day, President-elect Donald Trump and his allies will have the Herculean task of appointing 4,000 people to staff his administration. Trump campaign surrogate and “Make America Healthy Again” flagbearer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems positioned to exert broad influence on who will run the nation’s health-related agencies. He’s already begun soliciting nominees — albeit in an unconventional way.
Comments closedTopic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu
CDC expands avian flu testing for farm workers, notes 7% infection rate in those exposed to infected cows
An eagerly anticipated serology study in farm workers exposed to H5N1-infected dairy cattle shows that 7% had antibodies suggesting prior infection, findings that today triggered enhanced testing, prophylactic (preventive) treatment, and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Comments closedTopic: anti-vaxxersView all posts for the topic: anti-vaxxers
Trump indicates he would consider a ban on vaccines if elected
Donald Trump has suggested vaccines could be banned if he becomes president, in the clearest sign yet of a radical shake-up in public health policy should he put his ally Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of it.
Trump on Sunday told NBC that Kennedy, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and former independent candidate who dropped out and endorsed Trump, would have a “big role in the administration” if wins Tuesday’s presidential election. Trump said he would talk to Kennedy about vaccinations.
Comments closedTopic: science denialView all posts for the topic: science denial
An Idaho health department isn’t allowed to give COVID-19 vaccines anymore. Experts say it’s a first
A regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.
Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department.
Comments closedTopic: science denialView all posts for the topic: science denial
Trump transition team co-chair endorses Kennedy anti-vax theories and says he would be able to access health data
The co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team on Wednesday night endorsed vaccine conspiracy theories pushed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and suggested the activist and Trump ally would be given federal data in order to check vaccines’ safety if former President Donald Trump is elected.
Comments closed
Topic: avian fluView all posts for the topic: avian flu
H5N1 avian flu isolate from dairy worker is transmissible, lethal in animals
In experiments designed to learn more about the threat from the H5N1 avian flu virus spreading from cows to people, researchers found that an isolate from a sick dairy worker may be capable of replicating in human airway cells, is pathogenic in mice and ferrets, and can transmit among ferrets by respiratory droplets.
The team, based at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Japan, reported its findings today in Nature. Working in a high-containment lab, the researchers used an H5N1 isolate grown from the eye of a dairy worker who had experienced conjunctivitis after exposure to infected cows.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
‘Do no harm’ is hurting 400 million long Covid patients worldwide
Imagine, for a moment, that you wake up one morning with a debilitating illness that won’t let go. Weeks and months pass, but the crushing fatigue, constant headaches, and aching muscles remain. You can’t think straight. Simply showering or doing the dishes leaves you floored for days at a time, and the unpredictable symptoms — shortness of breath, dizziness, a racing heart — ebb and flow without warning. You find your life as you knew it slipping away.
This is life with long Covid: a condition that transforms the familiar rhythms of daily life into a living nightmare and constant battle for energy and clarity. But what happens when the only hope of lessening its severity becomes an issue of equity?
We are two of the more than 400 million people worldwide who have experienced long Covid. While we are both over four years into this illness, there is still not a single FDA-approved treatment for this devastating condition. Given the slow pace of research and development, there is unlikely to be proven treatment for years — possibly decades.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Study: Individuals with pre-existing disabilities had long COVID at much higher rates than peers
The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially hard on individuals with disabilities. New research from the University of Kansas shows that this population is also experiencing long COVID at significantly higher rates than the general population, which exacerbates existing barriers to accessing care.
Researchers from KU’s Institute for Health and Disability Policy Studies at the KU Life Span Institute and the Patient-Led Research Collaborative published a study showing that more than 40% of individuals with pre-existing disabilities who had tested positive for COVID-19 experienced long COVID, defined as symptoms lasting three months or longer. This rate is more than twice the 18.9% of individuals without disabilities who contracted COVID and experienced long COVID symptoms.
Research has long documented that individuals with disabilities face barriers to health care access and experience poorer health outcomes than their nondisabled peers. However, many studies during the pandemic have only asked about disabilities present at the time of the survey rather than whether individuals had a disability prior to the start of the pandemic. The research team compared data from the 2022 National Survey on Health and Disability, conducted by the IHDPS, to the Household Pulse Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
NIH-funded study finds long COVID affects adolescents differently than younger children
Scientists investigating long COVID in youth found similar but distinguishable patterns between school-age children (ages 6-11 years) and adolescents (ages 12-17 years) and identified their most common symptoms. The study, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published in JAMA, comes from research conducted through the NIH’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, a wide-reaching effort to understand, diagnose, treat, and prevent long COVID, a condition marked by symptoms and health problems that linger after an infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Children and adolescents were found to experience prolonged symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection in almost every organ system with most having symptoms affecting more than one system.
Comments closedTopic: mask bansView all posts for the topic: mask bans
Mask bans disenfranchise millions of Americans with disabilities
Last week, a mask ban in Nassau County, New York was signed into law. If I lived just 60 miles east of my New Jersey town, I would be under threat of a fine or jail time every time I left the house.
I’ve been masking consistently in public since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic began, because I have a kidney transplant and will take immunosuppressant medication for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, my lifesaving medication also makes me more susceptible to infectious diseases like measles, the flu, and Covid-19. Even when people like me are vaccinated against the virus, we are at higher risk of being infected and are more likely to experience adverse health outcomes, including hospitalization and death.
The legislation in Nassau County and elsewhere primarily targets people who wear masks to hide their identity while committing crimes or during public protests, specifically against the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Masks are defined as any facial covering that disguises the face, and facial coverings worn for religious or health reasons are exempt. But people like me, who wear masks for health reasons, are disproportionally affected by these bans even when they include medical exemptions.
Comments closedTopic: vaccinesView all posts for the topic: vaccines
FDA may greenlight updated Covid-19 vaccines as soon as next week, sources say
The US Food and Drug Administration is poised to sign off as soon as next week on updated Covid-19 vaccines targeting more recently circulating strains of the virus, according to two sources familiar with the matter, as the country experiences its largest summer wave in two years.
The agency is expected to greenlight updated mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech that target a strain of the virus called KP.2, said the sources, who declined to be named because the timing information isn’t public. It was unclear whether the agency simultaneously would authorize Novavax’s updated shot, which targets the JN.1 strain.
The move would be several weeks ahead of last year’s version of the vaccine, which got FDA signoff on September 11.
Comments closedTopic: long COVIDView all posts for the topic: long COVID
Long COVID leads to missed work days, economic loss
About 14% of participants in a new long-COVID study from Yale said they didn’t return to work in the months after their infection, suggesting that the condition results in major economic losses. The study is published in PLOS One.
The study was based on the outcomes of 6,000 participants at eight study sites in Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, Pennsylvania, Texas, and California from 2020 through 2022 as part of the Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections Registry, or INSPIRE study.
Comments closedTopic: pro-virus policiesView all posts for the topic: pro-virus policies
The US Government Is Shutting Down A Key Covid Website
Tomorrow the US government agency responsible for biomedical and public health research, The National Institutes of Health, will shut down its Covid-19 ‘special populations’ website.
This site hosts a huge amount of information about how to treat covid and long covid in the immunocompromised and in people with HIV, cancer and similar immune supressing conditions – so-called ‘special populations.’
The site is going totally offline.
Comments closed