Author: BigGuy

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NYC health commissioner quits over de Blasio’s COVID-19 response

New York City’s top public health official resigned Tuesday, accusing Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) of sidelining medical experts in the midst of a pandemic that has hit America’s largest city especially hard. In an emailed resignation letter, Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said she quit with “deep disappointment that during the most critical public health crisis in our lifetime, that the Health Department’s incomparable disease control expertise was not used to the degree it could have been.” “Our experts are world renowned for their epidemiology, surveillance and response work. The city would be well served by having them at the strategic center of the response not in the background,” Barbot wrote in an email first reported by The New York Times.

In an email to staffers, Barbot praised the agency as the gold standard in public health. “As I shared with the Mayor, your world class skills are what make this agency so respected around the globe,” Barbot told her colleagues. “Your experience and guidance have been the beacon leading this city through this historic pandemic and that to successfully brace against the inevitable second wave, your talents must be better leveraged alongside that of our sister agencies.”

Barbot has repeatedly clashed with de Blasio since the beginning of the pandemic. In May, the mayor stripped the health department of its authority over a massive contact tracing program, teams the department had led in past crises.

Nearly a quarter-million New York City residents have tested positive for the coronavirus, which began spreading widely through the city in March. At its peak in early April, more than 6,000 people were testing positive every day. Almost 19,000 have died, a steeper toll than any single state in the nation. The number of new cases has plummeted in recent weeks. On July 31, the last day for which data is available, just 82 New Yorkers tested positive. De Blasio on Tuesday appointed Dave Chokshi, a population health and medicine expert at NYU’s School of Medicine, to replace Barbot. Chokshi has been aiding the city’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.

“Dr. Chokshi has spent his career fighting for those too often left behind,” de Blasio said in a statement after Barbot’s resignation. “Never has that been more true than during the Covid-19 pandemic, where he has helped lead our City’s public health system under unprecedented challenges. I know he’s ready to lead the charge forward in our fight for a fairer and healthier city for all.”

Chokshi served as a White House fellow during the Obama administration and as a top health adviser to the secretary of Veterans Affairs.

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is one of the most prominent and practiced health departments in the world. Two former commissioners, David Sencer and Tom Frieden, went on to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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U.S. job growth slows sharply in July

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. employment growth slowed considerably in July amid a resurgence in new COVID-19 infections, offering the clearest evidence yet that the economy’s recovery from the recession caused by the pandemic was faltering. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.763 million jobs last month after a record 4.791 million in June, the Labor Department said on Friday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 1.6 million jobs were added in July. The unemployment rate fell to 10.2% from 11.1% in June, but it has been biased downward by people misclassifying themselves as being “employed but absent from work.” At least 31.3 million people were receiving unemployment checks in mid-July.

“The steam has gone out of the engine and the economy is beginning to slow,” said Sung Won Sohn, a finance and economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. “The loss of momentum will continue and my concern is that the combination of the virus resurgence and lack of action by Congress could really push employment into negative territory.”

The labor market step-back is more bad news for President Donald Trump, who is lagging in opinion polls behind former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for the Nov. 3 election. It also piles up pressure on the White House and Congress to speed up negotiations on a second aid package, which have been dragging over differences on major issues including the size of a government benefit for tens of millions of unemployed workers. A $600 weekly unemployment benefit supplement expired last Friday, while thousands of businesses have burned through loans offered by the government to help with wages. The economy, which entered into recession in February, suffered its biggest blow since the Great Depression in the second quarter, with gross domestic product dropping at its steepest pace in at least 73 years. Infections of the respiratory illness soared across the country last month, forcing authorities in some of the worst affected areas in the West and South to either shut down businesses again or pause reopenings, sending workers back home. Demand for goods and services has suffered. The slowdown in hiring challenges the U.S. stock market’s expectation of a V-shaped recovery. The S&P 500 index .SPX is up nearly 50% from its March trough. As COVID-19 cases spiral, and Republicans and Democrats bicker over another stimulus package, economists see a W-shaped recovery. Economists estimate the Paycheck Protection Program that gave businesses loans that can be partially forgiven if used for employee pay saved around 1.3 million jobs at its peak. The extra $600 weekly unemployment checks made up 20% of personal income and helped to boost consumer spending in May and June.

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US Tops 2,000 Deaths In 24 Hours: Johns Hopkins

https://youtu.be/O3b3LtPt4N8

The United States has recorded more than 2,000 coronavirus deaths in 24 hours, the highest number of daily fatalities in three months, Johns Hopkins University’s real-time tally showed Thursday.

The country, which has seen a major resurgence in coronavirus since the end of June, added 2,060 deaths in one day as well as more than 58,000 new cases, the Baltimore-based university showed at 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Friday).

The last time the US recorded more than 2,000 deaths in 24 hours was on May 7.

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Trump promises to defeat ‘China virus’ And have the vaccine by Election DAY

United States President Donald Trump proclaimed on Thursday his country would “defeat the China virus” as he touted the latest progress made in developing a treatment for the disease. “We have made tremendous strides and have a bounty of…

President Trump says he’s “optimistic” that a vaccine will be ready around Election Day, and it “wouldn’t hurt” his chances against former Vice President Joe Biden. But having a vaccine available for widespread public use before 2021 is unrealistic, according to public health experts, including the Coronavirus Task Force’s Dr. Anthony Fauci. Mr. Trump told Geraldo Rivera’s radio program “Geraldo in Cleveland,” on WTAM, Thursday that a vaccine could “in some cases” be ready sooner than November 3, but “right around that time.” Asked about this on the White House South Lawn a couple hours later, the president said he’s “optimistic” about a vaccine being ready around that date. “I’m optimistic that it’ll be probably around that date. I believe we’ll have the vaccine before the end of the year, certainly, but around that date, yes, I think so,” Mr. Trump sad.

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Goldman Says Covid-19 Vaccine Approval Could Upend Markets

(Bloomberg) — Investors should consider the risk of a successful coronavirus vaccine unsettling markets by sparking a sell-off in bonds and rotation out of technology into cyclical stocks, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The increased probability of an approved vaccine by the end of November is underpriced by equity markets, wrote strategists including Kamakshya Trivedi in a note Wednesday. Over the next few months, the ramifications of the U.S. election and the evolution of the virus — in part as schools reopen — are also likely to be key drivers of the market, they said.

Approval of a vaccine could “challenge market assumptions both about cyclicality and about eternally negative real rates,” the team wrote, adding such a scenario may support steeper yield curves, traditional cyclicals and banks, while challenging the leadership of technology stocks. If this happened along with a change in the U.S. administration, emerging market equities could benefit “if trade policy risks diminish while U.S. tax risks rise,” according to the note.

They see a potential downside target of 2,200 in the S&P500 should there be a significant reversal of activity from a second wave of the virus, the strategists added. The U.S. benchmark closed just under 3,328 on Wednesday.

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Why scientists are worried about a ‘Warp Speed’ COVID-19 vaccine

As the race for a COVID-19 vaccine heads into the stretch run, scientists are tempering their enthusiasm with caution. The biotechnology company Moderna and the National Institutes of Health have begun Phase III efficacy trials for their vaccine. The University of Oxford and Pfizer are running combined Phase II and III testing for their respective drugs. All together, drugmakers have 27 vaccines in trials. The goal of Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. vaccine initiative, is 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine by January, and if realized, it would be one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time. On Tuesday, Goldman Sach predicted the Food and Drug Administration would approve at least one vaccine before the end of the year. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last month he was hopeful a vaccine would be available by late fall or early winter.

Here’s what worries scientists:

—FDA regulators will likely face enormous political pressure to approve a vaccine, even one that’s not proven safe and effective.

—A vaccine that’s less effective than billed could cause wider spread of the pandemic, Michael S. Kinch, director of the Centers for Research Innovation in Biotechnology and Drug Discovery at Washington University in St. Louis, writes in Stat News.

“A merely short-term effect could encourage vaccinated individuals to resume risky behaviors, which would all but guarantee that the epidemic endures,” argues Kinch, who is also a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics.

—A vaccine would likely erode compliance of social distancing and mask wearing, measures that are proven effective against spread of the virus.

“They automatically are going to say, ‘Oh great, I’m just going to get my little vaccine, and I can go back and do exactly the things I was doing last year’. That is absolutely not true,” Maria Elena Bottazzi, associate dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told Business Insider in an interview.

—We don’t have enough data.

“What we have right now is a collection of animal data, immune response data and safety data based on early trials and from similar vaccines for other diseases,” writes Natalie Dean, assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, in the New York Times.

“The evidence that would convince me to get a COVID-19 vaccine, or to recommend that my loved ones get vaccinated, does not yet exist,” she says.

—If a substandard vaccine is green-lighted without adequate testing or trials, unforeseen harmful side effects could emerge. A weak initial vaccine and/or one with dangerous side effects would likely cause confidence in all vaccines to plummet and strengthen anti-vaccine sentiments. If a safer, more effective vaccine were subsequently developed, the residual mistrust could result in fewer people getting vaccinated.

—Epidemiologists estimate that to tame the pandemic, at least 70 percent of the population may need to develop immunity, either by vaccine or getting infected. Millions of Americans refusing to get inoculated by a vaccine that’s at least 50 percent effective (the minimum level according to the World Health Organization) could thwart that goal.

—A vaccine might only provide short-term immunity because of the nature of coronaviruses. Back in April, Dr. David States, professor of human genetics and director of bioinformatics at the University of Michigan, tweeted:

“If you’re hoping a vaccine is going to be a knight in shining armor saving the day, you may be in for a disappointment. SARS COV2 is a highly contagious virus. A vaccine will need to induce durable high level immunity, but coronaviruses often don’t induce that kind of immunity.”

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Trump is not considering nationwide lockdown

President Trump Is Not Considering A National Coronavirus Lockdown, McEnany Confirms
White House Press Secretary Kayliegh McEnany delivers press briefing. (Screenshot/YouTube/White House)

(Screenshot/YouTube/White House)

President Donald Trump is not considering a national lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany confirmed Tuesday. Trump and Republicans have long pushed back on the idea of a mandatory national quarantine, citing the federal government’s lack of authority to do so under the Constitution. Trump called on state governors to institute distancing measures tailored to their own states this spring, resulting in widespread protests against governors who took a more severe route.

Some experts say the lifting of current distancing measures across the country relies largely on the production of a successful coronavirus vaccine. White House Coronavirus Task Force member Dr. Anthony Fauci has said he is optimistic that a vaccine will be developed before 2021. The Trump administration’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’ project is aimed at partnering the public and private sectors to develop a vaccine or therapeutics to combat COVID-19.

Dr. Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security told the Daily Caller it may be more than a year before life returns to what Americans thought of as normal in 2019, however.

Adalja said the development of a vaccine is one part of the solution, but that vaccine must then be mass-produced, a process which he says could take until 2022.

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Why Trust Your Life to Coffee Filter Paper Masks

China Fucked you with the virus, now they are kyou with the masks

 

A Food and Drug Administration effort to address a shortage of protective masks has instead opened the floodgates to 3,500 Chinese manufacturers’ selling products of widely varying quality, potentially putting the public at risk and leaving some U.S. states with stockpiles of masks they no longer trust as protective gear, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. Facing a severe shortage of N95 respirator masks in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the FDA made an emergency decision to allow importation of millions of Chinese-made masks, generally called KN95s, that were supposed to provide similar levels of virus protection. But the FDA itself created confusion about which Chinese brands could be trusted for medical use, in part by giving—then revoking—its stamp of approval to masks that turned out to be subpar. Some of the companies given initial approval were just weeks old or posted incomplete mask-quality tests, the Journal found. The agency also relaxed its rules governing Chinese masks aimed at the general public, allowing hundreds of brands to be sold with little oversight and few quality checks, regulatory records show, rendering the KN95 label all but meaningless. The FDA now posts lists of Chinese-made respirators that are “authorized” and “no longer authorized” for medical use. Some manufacturers’ products are on both lists, distinguished only by often-similar model numbers. The FDA lists one model from the same manufacturer as both authorized and no longer authorized. The changes and conflicting information have led to confusion for health-care providers.

As the pandemic worsened, Chinese manufacturers registered hundreds of KN95mask brands with the FDA. Registration doesn’t mean they have FDA approval.Daily KN95 mask registrations with FDA Source: FDANote: Includes active registrations with KN95 inproduct name.

Suzanne Schwartz, a senior FDA device regulator, said in a statement that the agency has been constantly responding to new data and science during the pandemic. In approving Chinese respirators, she said, the agency initially built in safeguards due to concerns about fraudulent KN95s and has twice tightened rules based on fresh information. “We have provided regulatory flexibility where it is needed most,” she said.

The FDA said its main goal was to help hospitals obtain quality masks and that it has never told the general public to use KN95s. It relaxed restrictions on masks of many kinds in response to public demand for face coverings during the pandemic, the agency said.

N95 respirators, so-called because they filter out only 95% of very small particles, are viewed as critical to protect doctors, nurses, paramedics and other front-line workers from catching the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. N95 masks and high-quality substitutes—if they can be found—are particularly valuable now that the virus has surged in the south, southwestern and western parts of the U.S. Among the issues identified in the Journal analysis:

*State agencies submitted orders for more than 180 million KN95 masks to protect workers, according to public records, many of which are now sitting unwanted in warehouses due to quality concerns. Meanwhile, federal agencies have distributed millions of additional KN95 masks to states, which may have the same quality issues.

*More than 60% of foreign-made masks, nearly all Chinese made, have failed basic U.S. government quality tests that looked at 220 such brands, according to U.S. regulatory data.

*More than 3,500 Chinese manufacturers that have registered to sell KN95s in the U.S. were never fully vetted by any U.S. agency; some make virus-protection or filtration efficiency claims the FDA explicitly forbade when it relaxed the rules.

Complaints about fit are common with KN95s. The vast majority—even those authorized as medical respirators by the FDA—are secured with ear loops. Nearly all U.S.-authorized N95 masks use headstraps, which federal regulators and users say provide a more secure, airtight fit to keep out viruses.

The city of Portsmouth, N.H., which used KN95s to protect city workers, ran into quality problems and complaints from staffers that some fit poorly. If a respirator mask isn’t airtight, occupational-safety experts say, viruses can leak in.

The city is no longer trying to buy KN95s. “They don’t seal properly. They smell musty,” a spokeswoman said. “But if you absolutely had to have a mask, it’s better than nothing.”

The explosion of KN95s in the U.S. can be traced back to March, as the pandemic began to spread. Federal officials realized there was a severe shortage of U.S.-certified N95 masks made both domestically and abroad.

When tested by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, most foreign masks failed. Some of the manufacturers claimed the models tested were counterfeits,according to Niosh.Foreign masks tested in 2020Source: Niosh

At least 22 of the Chinese companies on the initial FDA emergency-use authorization list—including some still on the list—were named in fake or invalid certifications claiming their products passed European health and safety tests or were certified in Europe, according to a review of company marketing materials from official websites and from middlemen purchasing masks. Many claimed European certification in their packaging sold in the U.S., or stamped on their products.

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Scientists Worry About Political Influence Over Coronavirus Vaccine Project

 

 

Operation Warp Speed has moved along at a rapid clip. But some people involved in the process fear pressure to deliver an October surprise for President Trump.
President Trump has been relentlessly promoting the administration’s vaccine efforts, including during an appearance at a biotechnology laboratory in North Carolina last week.
Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Time

 

 

In April, with hospitals overwhelmed and much of the United States in lockdown, the Department of Health and Human Services produced a presentation for the White House arguing that rapid development of a coronavirus vaccine was the best hope to control the pandemic.