vaccines – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Vaccine Angst

David Posnett — Fri, 06 May 2022 23:25:07 +0000

The Covid pandemic has brought vaccines back into the limelight and a review of the history of vaccination seems timely.

Current day vaccines have saved millions of lives but a vigorous anti-vaccine movement has led to a culture war of sorts. The anti-VAXXers in the US have joined forces with right wing Republican politicians such as Eric Trump, son of the ex-president, Roger Stone, and others including Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The main gripe of anti-VAXXers seems to be the perceived infringement on individual rights, or the right to refuse medical treatment. For example, Pastor Mark Burns, who is running for Congress in South Carolina, likened the choice about vaccination to smoking: “Cigarettes kill people every day, but yet you can go to the supermarket right now and buy it with no issue, that’s their choice. If they want to go put cancer into their lungs, they have a right to do so.” He felt his position would help him win the primary in the conservative district where he hopes to be elected.

There is a difference however. Smoking is prohibited in many public spaces because passive exposure to smoke also leads to cancer. Your smoking is dangerous to me and my mmolking I dangerous to you. Likewise, Covid outbreaks endanger all of us, including those that have kept up with vaccinations and booster shots. Mandates for vaccination are not new in America. For example children enrolled in public schools must show proof of vaccination, although the rules are different from one state to the other. Persons working in healthcare can endanger their patients if they have an infectious disease. Having had a career in medicine, I am well acquainted with yearly Tb testing mandated for all hospital staff myself included!

Its interesting that new analysisby NPR suggests that Republicans are probably dying at a higher rate as a result of their much lower vaccination rate. A nationwide comparison of 2020 presidential election results and COVID-19 death rates since vaccines became available for all adults, found that counties that voted heavily for Trump had nearly three times the COVID-19 mortality rate of those that went for Joe Biden. Those counties also had far lower vaccination rates.

To understand the reluctance of Republicans to get vaccinated you really need to look at the excellent analysis by Joss Fong: How American conservatives turned against the vaccine. The partisan pandemic, explained in 15 charts. Joss Fong joss@vox.com Feb 23, 2022, 3:04pm

It boils down to a sentiment that took hold even before vaccines were available, namely that Covid wasn’t that serious, i.e. similar to the flu, and that it was hyped up as a threat for political purposes by Democrats. If Covid isn’t serious why even bother with an “unproven” vaccine. This argument was repeated by then Pres. Trump, and disseminated on Fox News and social media. After Trump was hospitalized for Covid he triumphantly returned to the White House and refused to wear a mask (when he was still likely infectious) making the point that we can lick this “China virus” and that Covid is not that serious at all, nothing to be afraid of.

Currently we have a sorry state of affairs with Republicans losing faith in other vaccines, including stalwart vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella as per data discussed in the analysis by Joss Fong

https://www.vox.com/22947498/partisan-pandemic-polarization-coronavirus-vaccine

In order to make some sense of all this, I took a look at the world history of vaccination, based largely on a publication by Stefan Riedel MD PhD, at Baylor Univ. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/

An English doctor named Edward Jenner gets credit for the procedure of vaccination based on his publication in 1798: He took material from the hand lesions of Sarah Nelms, a milkmaid afflicted with Cowpox, and injected this crude preparation of cowpox into an 8-year-old boy, James Phipps, the son of his gardener. The boy developed mild fever, and discomfort in the axilla, but 10 days later felt good again. Two months later Jenner inoculated the boy again, but this time with matter from a smallpox lesion. No disease developed and Jenner concluded the boy was protected, or “vaccinated”, vacca meaning cow in Latin. Similar protection was observed in other patients vaccinated with cowpox. It took quite a few years before the medical community accepted the new treatment. It helped that Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762) was a big advocate for variolation in England. Variolation was the procedure used prior to vaccination: healthy persons were inoculated with smallpox itself (rather than cowpox). Variolation was thought to be protective, but 2-3% of variolated persons died of smallpox! And many others had disfiguring smallpox or became the source of another epidemic. Nevertheless, European royals were so terrified of smallpox that many chose to get variolated including the Empress Marie-Therese of Austria, her children, and grandchildren, Frederick II of Prussia, Louis XVI of France. Frederick II inoculated all of his soldiers! (A mandate for sure.) There was a reason to vaccinate your army. American soldiers under George Washington were unable to take Quebec from the British troops, because of a smallpox epidemic among the American soldiers. All the while, the British troops were all variolated giving them some degree of protection!

As far back as 430 BC survivors of smallpox, presumably with a degree of immunity, were used to nurse the afflicted. Therefore I assume that the idea of immunity is age-old.

In England, cowpox vaccination gradually replaced variolation (which was prohibited in 1840). In America, Thomas Jefferson supported the vaccine effort and founded the National Vaccine Institute. Although Jenner was honored by the British Parliament and received prizes and cash, he was subjected to attacks and ridicule from the anti-VAXXers of the time. In many countries vaccination against smallpox became mandatory. Now, as a result, smallpox has been eradicated throughout the world. In 1980 the WHO announced that smallpox was eradicated worldwide.

Vaccination is arguably the biggest success story in modern medicine. It is also the basis of a whole new field of medicine: Immunology.

Vaccines currently cover many diseases: Tb (88% of one-year-olds vaccinated worldwide), Polio (eradicated), Diphtheria, Tetanus and Pertussis (85% of one-year-olds vaccinated worldwide), Hepatitis B (85% of one-year-olds vaccinated worldwide), Influenza type B (72%), Measles (71-85%), Rubella (71%), Pneumococcus (48%), Yellow fever (46%), Rotavirus (39%).

This graph on measles cases is perhaps most instructive:

WHO estimates (conservatively) that 2-3 million deaths are prevented every year just from vaccines to Diphtheria, Tetanus, whooping cough, and measles. But WHO also estimates that vaccine-preventable deaths are still responsible for 1.5 million deaths per year.

Subsaharan Africa is a geographical location notorious for poor vaccination rates, thought to be due to economic factors. Essentially, poor countries have poor vaccination rates and as a consequence, children die.

There is a lot of data on this site: https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination#not-every-child-who-should-be-vaccinated-is-vaccinated

It includes data on how people support vaccination across the world. While the large majority of the world supports vaccines, there are curious pockets of distrust. People were asked “are vaccines safe? are they effective?” An interesting outlier is France. Over 30% of the population disagree that vaccines are safe! And 20% don’t think they are effective. However, this does not translate into low vaccination rates or into distrust in nurses and doctors among the French!

It is not a perfect world out there. The planet itself could be considered “endangered”. The following is a recent Nature article from 28 February 2022:

Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

But, somehow humanity’s lot has improved over the last 5000 years. It is perhaps of interest that the world’s population hardly increased between 10,000 and 5,000 BC and this was primarily because of a succession of pandemics with high mortality (see James C. Scott, “Against the Grain”). If anything, the Covid pandemic reminds me that we are a fragile species living on a fragile planet. Vaccination could help save the species.

Frustrations Boil at Pace of Vaccinations at Long-Term Care Facilities

David Posnett — Sun, 17 Jan 2021 20:24:55 +0000

Our local ‘Retirement’ facility

The Trump administration raised hopes of a speedy process for nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Patience is wearing thin.

By Rebecca Robbins

In mid-December, a top Trump administration official floated an enticing possibility: All nursing home residents in the United States could be vaccinated against the coronavirus by Christmas. “It’s really a remarkable, remarkable prospect,” Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services, declared.

It turned out to be a fantasy.

A month later, vaccinations of some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens are going more slowly than many state officials, industry executives and families expected. Their hopes had been buoyed when government officials said long-term care facilities would be at the front of the line for vaccines.

CVS and Walgreens, which are largely responsible for vaccinating residents and workers in long-term care facilities, are on track to make at least initial vaccination visits to nearly all nursing homes they are working with by Jan. 25. The two pharmacy chains have already given out more than 1.7 million vaccine doses at long-term care facilities.

But the progress is uneven across the country and not nearly as comprehensive for different types of long-term care. For example, thousands of assisted living facilities — for older people who need less care than those in nursing homes — do not yet even have an appointment for their first visit from the pharmacy teams, in large part because states have given such facilities lower priority in their vaccine-distribution plans.

“I’ve had facilities call me, and I’ve had people cry, I’ve had people curse, because this was the first sign of hope that they’ve had in many, many months,” said Betsy Johnson, who leads a group that represents Kentucky’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

“It’s just human nature to think, ‘OK, but I was supposed to be first — and I don’t even know when my clinic is going to happen,’” Ms. Johnson said.

In Pennsylvania, teams from CVS or Walgreens are not scheduled to visit some nursing homes until February, and the vast majority of the state’s assisted living facilities have not yet been scheduled for a first visit, said Zach Shamberg, president of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association.

“There’s a great deal of frustration, there’s a great deal of apprehension, as to when or if this vaccine will come,” Mr. Shamberg said.

The pace of the vaccination program has taken on greater urgency as the rapidly spreading virus continues to decimate nursing homes and similar facilities. The virus’s surge since November has killed about 30,000 long-term care staff and residents, raising the total of virus-related deaths in these facilities to at least 136,000, according to a New York Times tracker. Since the pandemic began, long-term care facilities have accounted for just 5 percent of coronavirus cases but 36 percent of virus-related deaths.

Even as the vaccination campaign accelerates, the suffering is unlikely to wane. The coming months could be “the deadliest of the pandemic” for people living and working in long-term care, according to an analysis released on Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Trump administration announced in October that it had teamed up with CVS and Walgreens to lead a federal effort to vaccinate residents and workers at long-term care facilities, among the first eligible groups.

On Friday, CVS said it had given out just over one million doses in more than 12,000 initial visits to long-term care facilities. Nearly 8,000 visits are scheduled for the coming week. Walgreens said it had given out nearly 750,000 doses in nearly 9,000 visits to facilities, mostly nursing homes. The number of visits that Walgreens has scheduled with assisted living facilities “continues to accelerate,” a company spokeswoman, Rebekah Pajak, said.

The vaccinations by CVS and Walgreens were always expected to take several months because of the need to visit tens of thousands of facilities three times. The first two visits are for most residents and staff to get the two doses of the vaccine, with the third visit as a backup for people who missed the first clinic.

The idea that all nursing home residents could get their first doses by Christmas was not a realistic prospect even when Mr. Azar, the health secretary, floated it 12 days before the holiday. By that point, some states had told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that they would not activate the federal program to vaccinate their nursing homes until Dec. 28. The logistics would have been challenging even if states had put a priority on getting their first doses to nursing homes.

Michael Pratt, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, said Mr. Azar had been speaking only aspirationally about what states were capable of doing, since they had enough vaccine doses to cover all nursing home residents by Christmas. But that would have required that states place less of a priority on vaccinating high-risk groups like heath care workers.

T.J. Crawford, a spokesman for CVS, said the chain was making first visits to all facilities within four weeks of each state’s activating its vaccination program for nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

“This isn’t a drive-through or stadium vaccination effort,” Mr. Crawford said. “We’re visiting more than 40,000 facilities with an average of less than 100 residents, in some cases going room to room.” He said CVS was “on track and delivering on goals established and communicated early in the process.”

But a growing number of governors and state health officials have voiced frustration with CVS’s and Walgreens’ speed.

In Mississippi, some long-term facilities won’t get their first visit until Feb. 11, the state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said this month. “We’re clearly disappointed with the progress in the long-term care program,” he said.

Some states and cities are exploring ways to hasten the inoculations.

Seattle is using its Fire Department to vaccinate nearly 1,000 residents and staff at adult family homes, a type of long-term care, by the end of January. Florida hired an emergency services company, CDR Maguire, to give out doses at 1,900 assisted living facilities that had not been scheduled for visits by CVS and Walgreens teams before Jan. 24.

In Michigan, officials have asked the federal government to let them work with other pharmacies, such as the supermarket chains Meijer and Kroger, to speed up the vaccination effort in long-term care facilities, said Bobby Leddy, a spokesman for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

West Virginia is the only state that has not activated the federal program involving CVS and Walgreens, though Walgreens is separately working with West Virginia to vaccinate 32 of its long-term care facilities. Relying mostly on local independent pharmacies, the state said on Dec. 30 that it had wrapped up the first round at its 214 long-term care facilities.

Some of the initially feared problems that could slow down the vaccine rollout in nursing homes have not emerged as serious obstacles, at least so far, according to facility operators and industry researchers.

Despite widespread worries that the vaccines’ side effects — which can include fevers, chills and fatigue — would cause staff to miss work and residents to need more care, that has not happened to any significant degree. And while there was early confusion about how nursing homes should get consent from residents or their families, that process has largely gone smoothly.

But other things are slowing the campaign. A significant number of long-term care workers have balked at receiving the vaccine. The virus’s spread is also delaying the process. People should not be vaccinated while they still have Covid-19 symptoms or are isolating, according to the C.D.C.

Outbreaks and cases of Covid-19 in some long-term care communities have led Walgreens to delay scheduling initial visits or to reschedule them, said Rick Gates, an executive leading the company’s long-term care vaccinations.

CVS has encountered the same issue, though it has not been widespread. The company has left the decision about whether to proceed with visits in such cases to local clinic team leaders and officials at the facilities, Mr. Crawford said.

Another factor is that some states did not quickly activate their programs to vaccinate people at assisted living facilities and similar communities. In some cases, they waited until weeks after they began vaccinations at nursing homes.

But many long-term care facilities include both nursing homes and assisted living. In those cases, pharmacy teams have been able to vaccinate only a subset of residents.

In Prairie du Chien, Wis., for example, a team from Walgreens on Thursday made its first visit to the local nursing home, Prairie Maison, to inject nearly all of its roughly 50 residents with the Moderna vaccine.

But Prairie Maison is part of a larger senior community, which includes about 50 assisted living residents. Because Wisconsin did not activate its vaccination program for assisted living until Friday, those residents weren’t offered the vaccine — even though they are in the same building as the nursing home residents.

“Vaccinating one group and not the other doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Dr. Mark Grunwald, the chairman of Prairie Maison’s board.

From Kristin Stephens

Assistant Vice President, Media Relations and Public Affairs, GREATER NEW YORK HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION

See prior blog posts relevant to Peconic Landing:

Zeldin’s Anti-Vaxxer Donor

David Posnett — Mon, 11 May 2020 20:40:05 +0000

Zeldin’s Anti-Vaxxer Donor Joins Reopen Protests, Opposes Any Future COVID-19 Vaccine

Does Lee Zeldin agree with risking New Yorkers lives?

As Governor Cuomo prepares a statewide plan to reopen safely, Lee Zeldin donor and staunch anti-vaccine advocate Rita Palma joined calls to press Governor Cuomo to end the state’s stay-at-home order early. This comes as COVID continues to ravage New York and especially Long Island where the death toll now exceeds 3,000 with over 70,000 positive cases and rising.

Zeldin’s donor not only attended the dangerous, unpopular protests, but she expressed her total opposition to any future COVID-19 vaccine. In a recent feature, the New York Times pointed out that Palma’s anti-public health rhetoric “could further harm the country’s response to the pandemic.”

Zeldin received $2,000 in contributions from Palma last year alone. And it’s clear why: Zeldin voted against supporting efforts to fight vaccine misinformation last year. And he has not disowned the anti-vaccination movement nor the protests to reopen the state against the advice of health experts.

“While Long Islanders grapple with the ongoing public health and economic crisis, Lee Zeldin’s donor was busy ignoring social distancing guidelines and encouraging New Yorkers to take dangerous public health risks,” said DCCC Spokesperson Christine Bennett. “Given the Congressman’s vote against fighting vaccine misinformation, constituents deserve to know where Zeldin stands on risking New Yorkers lives.”

For Immediate Release: May 11, 2020. Christine Bennett.

See previous posts on anti-vaxxers:

https://resistancesuffolk.blog/2020/01/05/anti-science-movements/

https://resistancesuffolk.blog/2020/01/18/debunking-anti-vaxxers/

Debunking Anti-Vaxxers

David Posnett — Sat, 18 Jan 2020 15:32:39 +0000

Worth watching:

https://portside.org/video/2020-01-17/debunking-anti-vaxxers

Attacks on Science

David Posnett — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 15:53:43 +0000

From Jenny Mulligan:

Attacks on Science

The Trump administration and 115th Congress have been actively dismantling science-based health and safety protections, sidelining scientific evidence, and undoing recent progress on scientific integrity.

We’ve seen this movie before. And we know how to fight back. We’re standing up for science. We’re inviting scientists to securely share information on scientific integrity abuses. And we’re encouraging our supporters to watchdog this administration and Congress, as we did during the George W. Bush administration and the Barack Obama administration.

Below is a running list of attacks on science—disappearing data, silenced scientists, and other assaults on scientific integrity and science-based policy. The list provides a representative sample of threats to the federal scientific enterprise.

Beyond this list, many other moves by the president and Congress degrade the environment for science and scientists in this country. For example, the president’s Muslim ban hurts science and scientists, including those working for the federal government.These actions are also important to document, and we continue do so on the UCS blog.

Share these stories on social media. Tell us about case studies you think we should add through these encrypted channels.

The White House Suppressed Science from Congressional Testimony

White House officials stopped scientific information on climate change from being submitted in a written testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.

EPA Ignores Scientists that Say Wisconsin’s Air is Dirty and Could Make People Sick

The EPA is ignoring scientists who say that data does not support its decision that several southeastern Wisconsin counties had not violated air pollution standards.

Scientists Sidelined as CPSC Politicizes Children’s Safety

The CPSC did not consider scientific evidence in a decision to not recall a jogging baby stroller shown to harm children.

Here is what you can do about it:

share this with your friends and social media contacts
Write your member of Congress to support strong congressional oversight of agencies important to your community’s health and safety.

Tell Congress to hold the Trump administration accountable. >

Measles Epidemic

David Posnett — Mon, 20 May 2019 15:00:14 +0000

CDC: vaccines for your children.

As of April 29, 2019,

CDC (Centers for Disease Control) officials say measles cases have broken a 25-year-old record, with at least 704 sickened by the highly contagious disease

More than 500 of the people infected with the measles virus were not vaccinated, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Sixty-six people have been hospitalized, and one-third of the cases are children under 5.

This year’s outbreak represents a huge setback for public health after measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000.

Think about this: “more than 500 (of 704) were not vaccinated”.

Think about the risk this represents to your children and grand children. Unvaccinated individuals represent a potential public health hazard no different than people infected with scary bugs like Ebola, or Marburg virus, or HIV, etc. When I was a kid in the 1950s our parents were scared of polio and small pox. They were more than eager to get everyone in the family vaccinated. They stood in long lines to get a polio vaccine.

Now we have an organized anti-vaccine campaign #anti-vax. It latches on to scary reports such as the myth that vaccines cause autism, a multiply debunked theory based on a fraudulent British report.

My ire is reserved for those that try to gain political followers/clout by gaming the anti-vaccine movement. Donald Trump is at the head of this list. Just follow his tweets on the subject, or watch this

“Trump claims vaccines and autism are linked but his own experts vehemently disagree”

Ofcourse he has modified his position most recently for political expediency.

Now, he claims, he is all for vaccinating kids, but not in a “single massive dose”…? When was the last time DT went to see a pediatrician? It is many visits, all spaced out to maximize the effect for each vaccine: the protection, and the safety to the patient. Donald should keep his ignorant mouth closed. I don’t tell my car mechanic how to fix my car and Donald should not tell an army of federally funded experts how best to immunize the population.

As an immunologist (with 40+ years of professional experience) I can attest that vaccines have arguably saved more lives than any other medical intervention in the history of medicine! Just think about eradicated scary diseases like polio and small pox. And, yes, measles too was declared “eradicated” untill the likes of DT and his #antivax friends. Their irresponsible tweets and messages are in part the reason why measles has made a comeback. Let them go live on an quarantined island far away, together with small pox, and polio, and measles and every other nasty bug.

The science of vaccines is best left to the experts. The pathogens are always evolving and changing. Take influenza for example, for which we get a new vaccine every year. Vaccine recommendations for children and adults are also constantly modified and it is challengeing for health care providers to keep updated. Politicians and political advocates such as #antivax ‘ers, have no role in this process.