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Category: News

Public health and Icarus: what history reaches about hubris and mistakes

Icarus had a problem: Desperate to escape from prison, he made wings out of feathers and wax. His father warned him not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus couldn’t resist the freedom of soaring. His wings melted and he plunged to his death.

Like Icarus, public health is given advanced warning, but struggles between freedom and rules. And as in Greek myths, each failure offers a “moral.”

Here are five examples:

Referring to the pandemic in the past tense

COVID-19 is still spreading in unpredictable waves. Although hospitalizations are currently low, the virus landed over 1,000 Ontarians in hospital and killed nearly 500. New variants keep emerging, including the latest NB. 1.8.1, also known as “Nimbus.” It took just three months to become Canada’s dominant variant. Each time a new variant takes over, it threatens built-up immunity from vaccines and previous infections. Although Nimbus isn’t deadlier than previous variants, there’s no guarantee that future variants won’t cause more severe disease.

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Destroying 50 years of women’s health samples is like ‘burning the Library of Congress’

For decades, researchers have been collecting samples from hundreds of thousands of women and tracking their health. The work has deepened our basic understanding of human health, but now the entire project is in danger.

When nurses Patricia Chubb, 70, and her mother, Charlotte Mae Rohrbaugh, 98, joined the fledgling Harvard University-led Nurses’ Health Study in 1976, they had no idea it would last for nearly 50 years.

“It’s probably the longest, if not one of the longest, prospective health care studies for women that’s ever been done,” said Chubb, who lives in Pennsylvania. “They picked nurses to do the study because they know how to answer health questions correctly and can draw their own blood and the like — it’s very cost-effective.”

Study data gathered through the years from some 280,000 nurses in the United States has contributed enormously to improving how we live. The work has informed dietary recommendations, including national dietary guidelines led to hormonal therapies for breast cancer prevention and treatment; and contributed to research about how nutrients, inflammatory markers and heavy metals influence disease development.

Yet all of that priceless data may soon be discarded due to President Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with Harvard over what Trump claims is a failure to protect Jewish students during campus protests.

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How does Alberta’s new COVID-19 vaccine policy compare to other provinces? We asked

Alberta’s decision to reduce access to publicly funded COVID-19 vaccines so far appears to set the province on a different course than many other Canadian jurisdictions.

Most Albertans will no longer be eligible for a free COVID-19 shot this fall.

The provincial government recently announced plans to limit coverage to specific high-risk groups, including Albertans living in care homes and group settings, those receiving home care, people on social programs such as AISH, and immunocompromised individuals.

All other seniors, pregnant Albertans and health care workers are not included, despite strong recommendations by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) that they should be vaccinated. NACI also recommends that everyone else may receive an annual dose.

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We will not stay silent on vaccines, say leaders of five major U.S. medical associations

The authors are the presidents of American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Let us introduce ourselves. We are the doctors you trust with your health and the health of your family across every stage of life, from the first checkups in infancy and childhood, to health care during pregnancy and adulthood, through management of chronic illness and aging. We are family physicians, pediatricians, internal medicine physicians, OB-GYNs, and infectious disease experts. Our commitment is not to politics, but to the absolute well-being of our patients and populations, and to providing them with best evidence-based health care.

We have an urgent, united message: Immunizations work, they are very effective and safe, and they save lives. Vaccines are among the most rigorously studied and effective tools in public health. Through widespread immunization, we have eradicated debilitating and fatal diseases that once caused serious illness, hospitalization, and death for millions of people.

But today, that legacy is at serious risk.

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B.C.’s premier says measles spikes across Canada a result [of] anti-vax ‘recklessness’

VANCOUVER – British Columbia Premier David Eby says the growing spread of measles across Canada is “the sadly predictable outcome” of the “recklessness” of anti-vaccination politicians.

Eby says the disease is “no joke,” given the potentially serious impact on those infected, and it’s preventable with two vaccine shots.

He told a Vancouver news conference that the focus for provincial public health authorities now is to make sure that people who are not protected receive full vaccination.

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Childhood vaccines were a global success story. Misinformation and other obstacles are slowing that progress, a study shows

Routine vaccines have prevented the deaths of about 154 million children around the world over the past 50 years, a new study shows, but efforts have been slowing recently, allowing for the growth of some vaccine-preventable diseases. This backslide could lead to many more unnecessary illnesses and deaths without an increased effort to vaccinate children and counter misinformation.

The report, published Tuesday in the medical journal The Lancet, says that over the past five decades, the World Health Organization’s Expanded Programme on Immunization has vaccinated more than 4 billion children. This doubling of global coverage of vaccines has prevented countless cases of tuberculosis, measles, polio, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

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Check this list to see if you were exposed to measles in B.C. this month

The B.C. Centre for Disease Control has released detailed reports of where people may have been exposed to measles in B.C.

B.C. CDC says there are 12 currently active cases of measles in B.C. and that 17 new cases were reported in Fraser Health, Interior Health and Northern Health regions since June 19. Forty-nine cases have been reported this year.

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Viewpoint: CDC’s upcoming vaccine advisory meeting set up to sow distrust in vaccines

This week’s meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is likely to mark its end—for now—as a vaccine advisory body.

Regardless of which party controlled the White House and who served as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), ACIP—a federal advisory committee of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—held meetings that included presentations of vetted, evidence-based data and used a structured framework for moving from scientific evidence to vaccine recommendations.

Based on what we have learned about the new committee members appointed by the secretary, the meeting agenda and presenters, however, the purpose of the meeting appears to be an opportunity to deemphasize vaccine benefits—many of which are largely invisible to the public and taken for granted—and emphasize the potential risks of vaccines.

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Measles ‘out of control,’ experts warn, as Alberta case counts surpass 1,000

Alberta’s measles outbreaks have now eclipsed the 1,000-case mark and infectious disease specialists are warning the virus is “impossible to contain,” given the current level of transmission.

The province reported another 24 cases on Friday, including 14 in the north zone, nine in the south and one in the Edmonton zone.

This brings the total confirmed cases since the outbreaks began in March to 1,020.

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The U.S. is cutting billions from science. Canadian researchers say it’s time to step up

Scientists in Canada are scrambling. Over the past few months, the U.S. government has cut billions of dollars in funding from scientific research as part of sweeping cost-cutting measures.

“It’s really shocking. It’s really like this big cloud over science,” Kate Moran, CEO of Ocean Networks Canada, told Quirks & Quarks. Ocean Networks Canada participates in a project called the Argo system, an international program that collects information from on and under the ocean using a fleet of robotic instruments that drift with the ocean currents.

But that program, which is led by researchers in the U.S., could be at risk.

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‘I Think He Is About to Destroy Vaccines in This Country’

I think we are on the verge of losing vaccines for this country, from this country. And the reason is that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will hold up a paper, in the next four or five months, that says it’s aluminum in vaccines that are causing a whole swath of problems, including autism. I think he is about to destroy vaccines in this country. I do.

— Paul Offit
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Alberta government faces mounting pushback to new COVID-19 vaccine policy

The Alberta government is facing fierce and mounting opposition to plans that will reduce access to publicly funded COVID-19 vaccines in the province

The province announced late on Friday that it will limit funding of the COVID-19 shots to very specific high risk groups, including Albertans living in care homes and group settings, those receiving home care, people on social programs such as AISH, and immunocompromised individuals.

Seniors living in the community, pregnant Albertans and health-care workers will have to pay out of pocket for the vaccine, along with the rest of the population.

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UCP’s COVID vaccine cuts put children at serious risk

On May 27, the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics published a patient information page about Long COVID in children. It states “Long COVID is common, affecting up to 10 per cent to 20 per cent of children with a history of COVID-19. With almost six million U.S. children potentially affected, this is higher than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic health problem in children.”

Two weeks later on June 13, Danielle Smith’s UCP, famously fans of the anti-science Trump government, highlighted horrifically unscientific new FDA guidance suggesting healthy children and pregnant women are not recommended for COVID vaccination, while announcing a new policy where most Albertans have to pay for immunization.

Beyond the obvious inequities and loss of access that payment for prophylaxis presents, the UCP introduced a new four-phase rollout plan whereby those under age 65 without qualifying conditions cannot be vaccinated until the final phase. This means kids will likely head back to schools months before they are eligible for vaccination, ensuring they are exposed to the latest COVID strains before becoming eligible for updated vaccination. It also leaves the UCP an opening to not buy pediatric vaccines at all and claim “low demand.”

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Canada’s top doctor Theresa Tam leaving position when term ends June 20

TORONTO – As Dr. Theresa Tam prepares to leave her position next week, Canada’s top doctor says it’s more important than ever for Canada to stand up for science and combat disinformation.

She’s held the role of chief public health officer for eight years, but became a household name in the last five years as she led the country’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her term ends June 20 and she doesn’t have another job lined up, Tam said in a wide-ranging interview Friday that touched on her desire to be remembered for more than COVID, her passion for health equity and the musical side of her the public hasn’t seen.

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How Kennedy’s Purge of Advisers Could Disrupt U.S. Vaccinations

With two extraordinary moves, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has upended the certainty that American children will always have cost-free access to lifesaving vaccines.

For decades, a little-known scientific panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended which shots Americans should get and when. The group’s endorsement means insurance companies must cover the costs and helps states decide which vaccines to mandate for school-age children.

The panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also determines which shots are provided for free through the Vaccines for Children program, which serves about half of the children in the United States.

On Monday, Mr. Kennedy, long a vaccine skeptic, fired all 17 members of A.C.I.P., claiming that the group was rife with conflicts of interest and that a clean sweep was needed to restore public trust. Mr. Kennedy also reassigned C.D.C. staff scientists who oversee the panel’s work and vet its members.

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Alberta’s measles outbreaks are now the worst in nearly half a century

Alberta’s measles surge is so dramatic, the last time case counts were higher Calgary did not have an NHL team, O Canada was not yet the official national anthem and gasoline would set you back 24 cents a litre.

The province reported 29 more cases on Thursday, bringing the total since the outbreaks began in March to 868. That pushes the province past the levels seen during a surge in 1986, when 854 cases were reported.

A higher case count hasn’t been recorded since 1979.

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RFK Jr. names new members of CDC’s vaccine advisory panel

WASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday unveiled the names of the eight new members who will sit on the panel of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, and said they would review the current vaccine schedule, as well as evaluate new shots.

The new members include several well-known critics of vaccines.

“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X.

The appointment comes just days after Kennedy dismissed every member of the committee, calling for a “clean slate” with new members. The committee is scheduled to hold a meeting later this month.

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Kennedy dismisses entire US CDC vaccine panel, replacing all 17 members

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Reuters) – Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired all members sitting on a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts and is reconstituting the committee, his department said on Monday.

Kennedy removed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement, and is in the process of considering new members to replace them.

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