COVID mRNA Vaccines Safe, Effective for Babies and Toddlers, Says FDA Staff
Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccines proved safe and effective for kids under 5 years of age, paving the way for immunization of the only age group still awaiting access, according to FDA briefing documents released ahead of 2 days of advisory meetings. On Tuesday, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) will meet…
Does Media Exposure Influence an Individual’s Risk of Radicalization?
Summary: Exposure to radicalized content online, both active and passive, was associated with a more meaningful relationship with radicalization. Source: Wiley A recent analysis in Campbell Systematic Reviews examined...
CDC: No Evidence Monkeypox Is Airborne
There is currently no evidence that monkeypox is airborne, CDC officials said on Friday. To date, 45 cases across 15 states and Washington, D.C. have been reported — and not all are linked to international travel — but no deaths have been associated with the outbreak, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, said on a conference…
CDC: Two Distinct Monkeypox Strains Detected in U.S.
Gene sequencing efforts suggest that two different monkeypox variants are spreading in the U.S., raising the possibility that the virus has been circulating longer than experts initially thought, CDC officials said on Friday. Currently, there have been 20 monkeypox cases identified in 11 U.S. states, all in adults, Jennifer McQuiston, DVM, deputy director of CDC’s…
A massive new study confirms vaccinated people are still at risk of long COVID
Vaccines against COVID-19, while protective against hospitalization and death, may not be great at preventing long COVID after breakthrough infections, a new study finds. Epidemiologists associated with the US Department of Veteran Affairs looked at the medical records of 13 million individuals—mostly white male veterans aged 60 on average—including almost 34,000 who experienced breakthrough COVID-19…
‘WHO Has No Authority to Dictate U.S. Health Policy’
SciCheck Digest The World Health Organization can make recommendations after the declaration of a global emergency, but it has no control over any nation’s decisions....
Social media break improves mental health, according to a new study
Asking people to stop using social media for just one week could lead to significant improvements in their well-being, depression and anxiety, and could in...
New research confirms that partisan media consumption predicts subsequent shifts in sociopolitical attitudes
Exposure to partisan news can shift sociopolitical attitudes over time, according to new research published in PLOS One. The findings suggest that the association between partisan...
Fauci: COVID-19 Is Here to Stay, but We Can Control It
Though it would be next to impossible to eradicate SARS-CoV-2, it is fully feasible to control it, said Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), during a virtual event held Friday morning by the National Press Club. A variety of factors make COVID-19 different from polio and measles,…
Over 50% of U.S. Population Has Contracted COVID-19, CDC Says
Half of the U.S. population has been infected with COVID-19, including 75% of children and adolescents, CDC officials announced on Tuesday. From December 2021 to February 2022, during the Omicron wave in the U.S., overall seroprevalence increased from 33.5% to 57.7%, reported Kristie Clarke, MD, of the CDC’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, and colleagues in…
Teens Made Up Larger Share of Suicides Early in the Pandemic, Study Finds
Adolescent suicides made up a larger share of suicides at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to prepandemic years, according to data from 14 states. In 2020, individuals ages 10-19 comprised a significantly higher proportion of total suicides versus the prepandemic period of 2015-2019 (6.5% vs 5.9%, respectively), a relative 10% increase, reported Marie-Laure…
Under a new policy, federal agencies will have to weigh the climate costs of their actions
On April 19, the Biden administration restored a critical climate provision to a bedrock federal environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which had been narrowed under former President Donald Trump. The standard will require new infrastructure projects to more broadly consider how they alter the environment, especially when they are planned near already…
Record low Antarctic sea ice extent could signal shift
Pristine snow and ice reflect more than 80 percent of the Sun’s energy back into space. Sea ice around Antarctica shrank to the smallest extent on record in February, five years after the previous record low, researchers said Tuesday, suggesting Earth’s frozen continent may be less impervious to climate change than thought. In late February,…
Scientific-Integrity Watchdog Slaps Lawsuit on Maker of Homeopathic Pills
A nonprofit scientific advocacy group sued Boiron last week for deceptively marketing its homeopathic products, legal documents show. The Center for Inquiry (CFI) filed the lawsuit Thursday against Boiron, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer that sells homeopathic treatments, claiming that the company deceives customers about the nature and effectiveness of its products. The complaint alleges that Boiron…
Droughts threaten one of the Southwest power grid’s biggest electricity generators
This article was originally featured on High Country News. Thirty-nine years ago, due to record-breaking snowfall in the Upper Colorado River Basin, Lake Powell rose substantially, catching river managers off-guard. By late June, the reservoir was nearly overflowing, forcing operators—for the first time ever—to rely on the spillways. Instead of giving relief, that precipitated a…
Fourth Pfizer Dose Averts Most Severe COVID Outcomes in Older Adults
A fourth dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine provided modest protection against infection in older adults, as well as greater protection against more severe outcomes, real-world data from Israel showed. In a cohort of 182,122 matched pairs of adults ages 60 and up, relative vaccine effectiveness ranged from 52% against asymptomatic infection to 76% against…
Bell’s Palsy, Other Rare Events Not Linked With COVID-19 Vaccines
Immune-mediated neurologic events did not increase after COVID-19 vaccination, electronic health record data in the U.K. and Spain showed. No safety signal was found between COVID-19 vaccines and Bell’s palsy, encephalomyelitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, or transverse myelitis, reported Daniel Prieto-Alhambra, MD, PhD, of the University of Oxford in England, and co-authors. However, rates of Bell’s palsy,…
COVID’s Death Toll 3 Times Worse Than Official Counts
The global COVID-19 death toll may be three times higher than official tallies suggest, according to a systematic analysis of excess mortality during the pandemic. From Jan. 1, 2020 to Dec. 31, 2021, global deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 reached 5.9 million, yet estimates put excess deaths during this period at a staggering 18.2 million…
COVID Antivirals Appear to Hold Up Against BA.2
While two monoclonal antibody combinations showed neutralizing activity against the Omicron subvariant BA.2, both required substantially higher concentrations to produce a response in patients with COVID-19, Japanese researchers said, while antivirals appeared to be less affected. Casirivimab/imdevimab (REGEN-COV) and tixagevimab/cilgavimab (Evusheld) inhibited BA.2, but the titer of monoclonal antibodies “required for a 50% reduction in…
FDA Begins Releasing Pfizer COVID Vax Documents
The FDA turned over thousands of documents related to its review of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine last week, marking the first of several releases mandated by a court in Texas earlier this year. The agency released 55,000 pages of COVID-19 vaccine review documents last Tuesday, following a loss in court months earlier that forced it to…