Monday, June 6, 2022

Why Boosted Americans Seem to be Getting More COVID-19 Infections; The COVID Cult Did Lasting Damage to Our Kids, and other C-Virus related stories

Why boosted Americans seem to be getting more COVID-19 infections:
As COVID-19 cases began to accelerate again this spring, federal data suggests the rate of breakthrough COVID infections in April was worse in boosted Americans compared to unboosted Americans — though rates of deaths and hospitalizations remained the lowest among the boosted.
The new data do not mean booster shots are somehow increasing the risk. Ongoing studies continue to provide strong evidence of additional protection offered by booster shots against infection, severe disease, and death.
Instead, the shift underscores the growing complexity of measuring vaccine effectiveness at this stage of the pandemic. It comes as officials are weighing key decisions on booster shots and pandemic surveillance, including whether to continue using the "crude case rates" at all.
It also serves to illustrate a tricky reality facing health authorities amid the latest COVID-19 wave: even many boosted Americans are vulnerable to catching and spreading the virus, at a time when officials are wary of reimposing pandemic measures like mask requirements.
"During this Omicron wave, we're seeing an increased number of mild infections — at-home type of infections, the inconvenient, having a cold, being off work, not great but not the end of the world. And that's because these Omicron variants are able to break through antibody protection and cause these mild infections," John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, told CBS News. --->READ MORE HERE
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The COVID Cult Did Lasting Damage to Our Kids:
In the spring of 2020, Dr. Jeanne Noble witnessed an uptick in teens and adolescents going to the emergency room in mental health distress. Dr. Noble is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and the director of the COVID-19 response for UCSF’s emergency department. In the fall of 2020, she gave a presentation to Alameda County’s Public Health Department showing data that demonstrated an increase in the number of kids who were screening positive for suicidal thoughts in the ER. She wanted, she told me, to communicate how much kids were suffering and find a safe way to reopen schools.
Dr. Noble thought she had presented devastating data about ER records not only for young people exhibiting suicidal ideation but also for kids showing other warning signs, such as cutting and eating disorders. Nevertheless, she said, “the response at the end of my PowerPoint presentation was, ‘What are you trying to do?’” Kids’ mental health “was such a low priority compared to where everyone else was focusing their attention, which was COVID numbers,” she recalled.
While Dr. Noble’s early concerns were dismissed, today there is no shortage of articles and studies documenting the harm caused by COVID-19 school policies over the past two and a half years. The number of ER visits in 2021 by adolescent girls for suspected suicide attempts was 51% higher than during the same period in early 2019. Skyrocketing violence statistics involving young men, including a spate of shootings, may also be traceable to mental illnesses exacerbated by the enforced isolation of COVID-19.
There can be little question that closures permanently altered the relationship of many students to school. One survey found that the rate of chronically absent students nationwide is now 22%, 2.7 times what it was before school closures. In New York City, 4 out of 10 students are now chronically absent; in Los Angeles nearly half of all students are chronically absent. These statistics indicate an instructional system that in many cases has simply ceased to function. --->READ MORE HERE
Follow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:

Coronavirus update: Getting a booster may increase chance of breakthrough infection, study finds

We’re sick of the QR codes already — bring back real restaurant menus!

USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates

WSJ: Coronavirus Live Updates

YAHOO NEWS: Coronavirus Live Updates

NEW YORK POST: Coronavirus The Latest

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