One Vaccine to Rule Them All
“This virus is going to hang around for another couple of years before the world suppresses it, if we’re lucky,” Fauci told me. “I can’t guarantee that we’ll get a universal vaccine in place for this virus, but certainly we need it for the next one.”
… The project to create a truly universal coronavirus vaccine would encapsulate a variety of disciplines: cellular and systems biology, immunology, genetics, artificial intelligence, and structural modeling, to name a few. So the coalition to accomplish this would need to be broad, Koff says. The U.S. investment in tracking viral genomes could create a small piece of the infrastructure necessary for tracking many other viruses. Similar efforts will be needed around the world, in order to keep abreast of constantly changing viral maps. Koff estimates that the governments of the G7 nations would have to come together with the private sector, the World Health Organization, and nonprofits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in order to make the system work. “It might cost billions, but this pandemic alone has cost trillions,” Koff says. “We didn’t learn after SARS, MERS, HIV, swine flu—but maybe this time we will.”
30-Year-Old Man Hospitalized With Blood Clots After J&J Vaccine
In what is believed to be the first reported case of its kind in a male, a 30-year-old Bay Area man is being treated for a blood clot disorder he developed after receiving the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) COVID vaccine, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The man was vaccinated April 8, and a week later experienced increasing lower back and leg pain. He was hospitalized at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) medical center where he received treatment “which includes intravenous immune globulin, the anticoagulant argatroban and prednisone,” UCSF spokeswoman Suzanne Leigh said in a statement Monday.
Miami Private School Informs Parents Vaccinated Teachers ‘May Be Transmitting Something From Their Bodies’
Vaccinated adults “may be transmitting something from their bodies” that could be impacting the “reproductive systems, fertility, and normal growth and development in women and children,” Leila Centner informed the school community. “Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person.” As a result, the school concluded “it is in the best interests of the children to protect them from the unknown implications of being in close proximity for the entire day with a teacher who has very recently taken the COVID-19 injection.”
In Africa, Vaccine Hesitancy Adds To Slow Rollout of Doses
Some Africans are hesitating to get COVID-19 vaccines amid concerns about their safety, alarming public health officials as some countries start to destroy thousands of doses that expired before use.
Malawi and South Sudan in recent days have said they will destroy some of their doses, a concerning development on a continent where health officials have been outspoken about the need for vaccine equity as the world’s rich nations hold the bulk of shots.
With Ok From Experts, Some States Resume Use of J&J Vaccine
The federal government uncovered 15 vaccine recipients who developed a highly unusual kind of blood clot out of nearly 8 million people given the J&J shot. All were women, most under age 50. Three died, and seven remain hospitalized.
But ultimately, federal health officials decided that J&J’s one-and-done vaccine is critical to fight the pandemic — and that the small clot risk could be handled with warnings to help younger women decide if they should use that shot or an alternative.
Scientists Launch Study To Find Out if COVID-19 Vaccines Are Causing Period Changes After Hundreds of Women Notice Irregularities
Dr Kathryn Clancy, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Dr Katherine Lee, a post-doctoral scholar in the public health sciences division at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, each received their shots earlier this year.
Both women noticed that aside from the usual side effects — such as a pain at the injection site — they also had temporary changes in their menstrual cycles.
Bill Gates Under Fire for Saying Vaccine Formulas Shouldn’t Be Shared With Developing World
The Independent reported via Yahoo News:
During an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Mr Gates was asked if it “would be helpful” for intellectual property protections to be lifted and for vaccine recipes to be shared with the world.
Mr Gates flatly said “no,” before adding: “There’s only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done, moving a vaccine, say, from a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India, it’s novel, it’s only because of our grants and expertise that can happen at all.”
… Journalist Stephen Buranyi tweeted that Mr Gates “acts like an optimist but has a truly dismal vision of the world. We can’t make more vaccines, we can’t compromise profits, we can’t trust poor countries with our technology, and they’ll get their scraps after we eat. Awful.”
West Virginia To Give $100 Savings Bonds to Residents Under 35 Who Get Vaccine
The Hill reported via MSN News:
The state, according to Justice, will use the money it received from the CARES Act, the COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress last March, to pay for the savings bonds.
Young West Virginia residents, according to Justice, are not being vaccinated “as fast as we’d like them to take them,” which is why he is spearheading the savings bond plan.
“If we really want to move the needle, we’ve got to get our younger people vaccinated,” he continued at a press briefing.
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