The United States has a health-care system that is terrible and getting worse. It also has a health science system that is the best in the world and about to be dismantled.
The impending return of Donald Trump to the White House seems likely to collapse American health science, with consequences as disastrous for the rest of the world as for the approximately 340 million Americans in the U.S. Canada may be able to soften the impact here, but it will not be easy.
Comments closedSenate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, says any of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees seeking Senate confirmation should “steer clear” of efforts to discredit the polio vaccine.
“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” McConnell said in a statement Friday. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.”
The 82-year-old lawmaker’s statement appeared to be directed at Trump’s pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after a report that one of his advisers filed a petition to revoke approval for the polio vaccine in 2022. That vaccine is widely considered to have halted the disease in most parts of the world.
Comments closedThe lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.
That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.
Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.
Comments closedThe UK Health Security Agency (HSA) today announced a contract with CSL Seqirus to buy more than 5 million doses of human H5 avian flu vaccine to prepare for a potential influenza pandemic.
In a statement, the HSA said the vaccine will be based on a current H5 strain and is part of a longer-term plans to ensure access to vaccines for a wider range of pathogens that have pandemic potential.
Comments closedA Kingston family doctor is being ordered to repay more than $600,000 to the Ontario government for what the province says was reimbursement for improperly billed medical services related to mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
Dr. Elaine Ma has been told by the Health Services Appeal and Review Board to repay $600,962.61, plus interest, to the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP), to reimburse money she billed the province for vaccinations administered during drive-in COVID-19 vaccination clinics between July 2021 and January 2022.
Comments closedWhen COVID-19 first struck, Canada had a problem: It lacked domestic capacity to manufacture vaccines. Today, the government of Canada faces the opposite problem: It owns a factory that isn’t manufacturing vaccines.
The Biologics Manufacturing Centre (BMC) in Montreal was completed in 2021 at the cost of $126 million, and fully licensed by Health Canada in 2022. However, a 2021 deal with Novavax to produce their COVID-19 vaccine looks increasingly unlikely to produce a single dose. Indeed, despite annual operating costs around $17 million a year, the BMC has never produced anything.
Comments closedA new meta-analysis of studies involving more than 14 million people published in the Journal of Infection shows that COVID-19 vaccination is associated with a lower risk of developing long COVID, with two doses reducing the odds by 24% and one dose reducing the odds by 15%.
In the 25 studies published up to February 2024 that were included for analysis, long COVID was defined as persistent symptoms at 3 months or beyond, and all studies compared long-COVID symptoms between vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, with the number of doses received by participants specified. All studies included were observational trials and included in total 14,128,260 participants.
Comments closedStanford University professor and Covid-19 lockdown sceptic Jay Bhattacharya has emerged as the frontrunner to run the National Institutes of Health, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The nomination of Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence during the pandemic for opposing lockdown restrictions, would put another ally of Robert Kennedy Jr, the vaccine sceptic who is Trump’s pick to run the US health department, in charge of one of the country’s most powerful public health agencies.
Comments closedLong 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 closedComments 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.
Just over 52,000 New Brunswickers have received the latest COVID-19 vaccine, and more than 91,000 have received this year’s flu shot since they became available on Oct. 3, according to the government.
Comments closedA Kingston, Ont., doctor celebrated for organizing drive-thru vaccination clinics that helped thousands get shots at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic is now being ordered to pay back more than $600,000 in fees for those same services.
Dr. Elaine Ma said she organized 45 mass vaccination clinics that administered roughly 35,000 doses between April 2021 and the following February.
Her work was recognized by the Ontario College of Family Physicians, which granted her its Award of Excellence in 2021, in part pointing to Ma’s role in boosting local vaccination rates.
Comments closedVaccine production is nearly three years behind schedule at a federally owned plant in Montreal and the future of a deal between Ottawa and an American company to make COVID-19 vaccines here is now under review.
Comments closedDonald 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 closedA 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 closedA co-chair of Donald Trump’s transition team said Trump supporter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants access to federal health data so he can show vaccines are unsafe and lead to them being pulled from the market in a second Trump administration.
Howard Lutnick echoed a number of Kennedy’s debunked anti-vaccine talking points in a CNN interview Wednesday, including falsehoods about the vaccine schedule and the disproven theory that vaccines cause autism. Trump has talked often about how Kennedy, who suspended his own presidential bid and endorsed him in August, will have a big role to play if the former president returns to the White House.
Comments closedThe 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.
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