CLARIFYING COVID-19 (aka yes, cuz all these sites want to hurt people 🙄)

There are already 127 confirmed cases across almost half of the U.S. of a new Covid subvariant that's even more contagious than omicron.

Global infections fall for the 3rd consecutive week, dropping 21%; WHO estimates 99% of all cases are Omicron variant; number of deaths also fall for first time since January

Moderna Chief Medical Officer Paul Burton said Covid is entering an endemic phase in the Northern Hemisphere.

Immunologist Dr. Satyajit Rath and NewsClick's Prabir Purkayastha discuss the prevailing vaccine apartheid and try to understand how it is against the common good of the people of the world

Being proved wrong lies at the heart of scientific progress. Here, experts reveal what they got wrong during the pandemic

Editorial: Only one in four African healthcare workers is protected. Regional production and patent waivers are needed

Data should be fully and immediately available for public scrutiny In the pages of The BMJ a decade ago, in the middle of a different pandemic, it came to light that governments around the world had spent billions stockpiling antivirals for influenza that had not been shown to reduce the risk of complications, hospital admissions, or death. The majority of trials that underpinned regulatory approval and government stockpiling of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) were sponsored by the manufacturer; most were unpublished, those that were published were ghostwritten by writers paid by the manufacturer, the people listed as principal authors lacked access to the raw data, and academics who requested access to the data for independent analysis were denied.1234 The Tamiflu saga heralded a decade of unprecedented attention to the importance of sharing clinical trial data.56 Public battles for drug company data,78 transparency campaigns with thousands of signatures,910 strengthened journal data sharing requirements,1112 explicit commitments from companies to share data,13 new data access website portals,8 and landmark transparency policies from medicines regulators1415 all promised a new era in data transparency. Progress was made, but clearly not enough. The errors of the last pandemic are being repeated. Memories are short. Today, despite the global rollout of covid-19 vaccines and treatments, the anonymised participant level data underlying the trials for these new products remain inaccessible to doctors, researchers, and the public—and are likely to remain that way for years to come.16 This is morally indefensible for all trials, but especially for those involving major public health interventions. Pfizer’s pivotal covid vaccine trial was funded by the company and designed, run, analysed, and authored by Pfizer employees. The company and the contract research organisations that carried out the trial …

Score one for transparency.

AbstractSTUDY QUESTION. Does the immune response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection or the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine involve the ovarian follicle

Districts should rethink imposing on millions of children an intervention that provides little discernible benefit.

The FDA has given a full green light to Moderna's Spikevax vaccine. How will that affect the COVID pandemic?

The emergence of Omicron underscores the consequences of vaccine inequity. Experts say it will take more than donations to fix the problem.

I have seen a few comments about the need for COVID-19 vaccine boosters before and after the appearance of the new Omicron variant. Of course,

There have been more than 17,000 so-called breakthrough cases of COVID-19 involving fully vaccinated Ontarians over the last year but the number of those people under 60 who eventually ended up in an intensive care unit is only nine.

COVID-19 hospitalizations instead of case counts should determine our public health measures to fight the Omicron variant wave

A study out of Oregon finds people fully vaccinated for COVID-19 who get a breakthrough infection end up with what the authors call 'super immunity.'

Pfizer is among the Big Pharma companies trying to block legislation strengthening whistleblowers’ ability to report corporate fraud.