U.S. government gave $3.7 million grant to Wuhan lab at cent

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9 things to know about the COVID-19 vaccine
by MD Anderson Cancer Center Staff
December 11, 2020

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As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to increase, you probably have a lot of questions about the coronavirus vaccine. Why are health care workers receiving the COVID-19 vaccine first? How soon will you be able to get the COVID-19 vaccine and get back to some semblance of a normal life? When can cancer patients get vaccinated?

For answers, we spoke with our chief medical officer Welela Tereffe, M.D., and infectious diseases specialist and head of Internal Medicine David Tweardy, M.D.

Why are health care workers receiving the COVID-19 vaccine before patients?

Tereffe: As vaccine production ramps up, there will be a limited number of doses available.

Federal and state guidelines require that, as long as vaccine supply is limited, the vaccine must be available to health care workers first. MD Anderson is one of the Houston health systems selected as a pre-position site for COVID-19 vaccines that are authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use. MD Anderson’s initial vaccination clinics will safely and efficiently vaccinate health care workers caring for highly immune compromised patients and those with increased risk of occupational exposure.

By offering the vaccine to health care workers first, public health officials hope to reduce everyone’s risk – patients and staff – of exposure to the coronavirus in hospitals and clinics and to ensure continued care for patients.

When will the COVID-19 vaccine be available for cancer patients?

Tereffe: People with serious health conditions such as cancer, and people with weakened immune systems, were not included in many of the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials.

As the vaccine becomes more widely available, we’ll learn more about the indications, benefits, and side effects in people with serious health conditions. Your care team will then be able to give you that information so you can make an informed choice about vaccination.

It’s important to continue taking precautions such as wearing a mask, maintaining social distancing and washing your hands frequently, even after you receive a COVID-19 vaccine. These precautions will be necessary until public health experts advise otherwise.

How do the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work?

Tweardy: Our cells use messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce the various proteins our bodies need to function. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines both use an mRNA sequence that codes for the unique spike protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Once a person receives the vaccine, their cells take up that mRNA sequence and produce the COVID-19 spike protein. Their immune system then detects those proteins as foreign and creates antibodies against them, which helps provide protection from future COVID-19 infections.

Currently, both of these vaccines require two doses given a few weeks apart to be effective.

What are the other types of coronavirus vaccines being developed?

Tweardy: There are three other types being developed that are in the lead. One involves deactivated virus. The third type uses a carrier virus (such as an adenovirus) containing the part of the coronavirus’ DNA that encodes the spike protein. The fourth type uses a single protein from the tip of the spikes that cover the coronavirus and allow it to bind to and infect human cells.

The type that uses deactivated virus is the most old-fashioned and the least sophisticated. It involves injecting people with virus that’s been inactivated (or made harmless) through heat or some other means. This causes a very broad immune response in the recipient, but not necessarily the one you want.

The carrier virus method targets the really important part of the virus — the protein spikes that stick up like little maces all over its surface — instead of the virus as a whole. It prompts the body to generate the spike protein itself. Once that happens, the immune system recognizes it as an invader and starts developing antibodies against it. So, when the real coronavirus comes along, these antibodies can shut it down. This is the strategy that most of the vaccine makers are pursuing right now.

The last type of coronavirus vaccine involves injecting people with the spike protein itself, instead of pushing their bodies to generate it.

All three of these last approaches have been used successfully, based on the studies done so far. The last one is just not quite as far along in testing as the RNA and carrier approaches are.

What makes the RNA-approach so different from that of previous vaccines?

Tweardy: This is the first time this type of technology has ever been used for a vaccine. And the speed at which it is being developed is truly mind-boggling.

Remember, this particular coronavirus was virtually unknown in November 2019. The actual syndrome caused by it was only first described in December 2019. A month later, scientists had isolated the virus and sequenced its genome. That’s something that used to take a full year or more. Two months later, we had the first COVID-19 vaccine candidates. Four months after that, some were already in Phase III clinical trials. And we’ll have a coronavirus vaccine available to health care workers in December 2020.

We’re living through a modern scientific miracle. Vaccines have not been developed at this speed before. Vaccine development usually takes 10 to 15 years after the identification of a new infectious disease. I’ve been working in infectious diseases for 40 years, and I never would’ve thought it was possible.

Could this same mRNA vaccination method be used again against future coronaviruses?

Tweardy: Absolutely. This strategy has the capacity to almost let us anticipate the next strain of coronavirus so we can be prepared for it, kind of like we do now with the flu.

We could sequence the next coronavirus that’s identified as distinct and separate from this one in a month or less. Once we had that, we could insert the sequence of its spike protein into every step of the vaccine development pathway. That could get us another vaccine for testing within three months.

With this family of coronaviruses, that could potentially allow us to have a vaccine ready before the next one even becomes a pandemic. So theoretically, we could stop the next pandemic in its tracks.

Is the coronavirus vaccine safe?

Tweardy: Yes. I think anyone who gets a coronavirus vaccine can have confidence that it will be safe. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be approved. The Food and Drug Administration has been looking at this very carefully, and the vaccine has had to be tested on a lot of people to get approved.

COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus similar to SARS and MERS, and researchers were able to build upon previous work creating vaccines for these diseases as they searched for a vaccine against COVID-19. mRNA has been studied for many years in relation to the study of infectious diseases and as an area of opportunity in cancer treatment.

COVID-19 is the third in a series of coronaviruses. After SARS and MERS, we understand the pathogenesis and early aspects of immunity and have learned from those experiences and taken that knowledge to target the weak spot of coronaviruses.

Even more closely watched than the efficacy of the vaccines in the clinical trials is the safety of the participants. For the FDA to consider an application for emergency authorization of a vaccine, more than half of the people enrolled must have been monitored for at least two months. Preliminary data shows the observed side effects are very similar to the flu vaccine, such as pain at the injection site and fatigue.

The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee comprises experts in medicine and research who meet to review the request for emergency use authorization (EUA) of the vaccine, and these experts evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. Clinical trial participants will continue to be followed even after any EUAs are granted.

Should I be concerned when I hear that an ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trial has been paused?

Tweardy: No. It’s fairly common for studies to be stopped temporarily. This gives researchers time to determine if any serious adverse events people experience are due to the vaccine or caused by something else.

Even during a pandemic, life goes on, so people can still become ill for any number of reasons. If researchers determine the adverse events are unrelated to a vaccine, then studies can be restarted. This has occurred in the case of two big COVID-19 vaccine trial; the pause was lifted and the trial restarted after a one-week review by independent trial safety experts determined that the adverse event was unrelated to the vaccine.

How long will the coronavirus vaccine be effective?

Tweardy: We’d obviously love for it to give lifelong immunity against COVID-19, but that remains to be seen. If I had to guess, I would say it’s probably going to fall somewhere between influenza and the mumps, in terms of longevity of protection. It will probably be closer to the flu, because respiratory viruses don’t tend to lead to long-term immunity.

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New cancer patients — especially Black people — are more susceptible to severe Covid-19 infections
by Elizabeth @cooney_liz
Statnews.com
December 10, 2020

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Recently diagnosed cancer patients are more vulnerable to Covid-19 infection and face more severe illness than people without cancer, a risk that is significantly higher for Black people than for white people with both diseases, a large new analysis concludes.

Deploying artificial intelligence to comb through 73 million Americans’ electronic health records, researchers discovered that people who learned they had leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, or lung cancer in the past year were at the greatest risk for Covid-19 infection compared to those without cancer or those whose cancers had been diagnosed longer ago. For Black people with cancer, the risk of Covid-19 infection was highest in patients who had breast, prostate, colorectal, or lung cancer.

“The important differentiating factor was that African Americans with cancer were more susceptible to Covid-19 infection than Caucasians,” said Nathan Berger, a medical oncologist and professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. He is a co-author of the study published Thursday in JAMA Oncology.

Black people were more likely than white people to be hospitalized for cancer alone, Covid-19 alone, or both diseases. The difference in death rates did not reach statistical significance — 18.5% for Black patients vs. 13.5% for white patients — but the analysis was limited by small numbers — 100 of 670 patients with Covid-19 and cancer died, 50 Black and 50 white — an editorial appearing with the paper said.

Recent research has found that death rates inside hospitals are similar, but death rates outside hospitals are disproportionately higher among Black people.

The combined cancer-Covid-19 risk was higher than adding numbers for the two diseases together. In all patients, “The combination of the virus and cancer is synergistic and leading to mortality. The death rates are much higher than they are for either of the diseases alone,” Berger said.

The reasons for leukemia, lymphoma, and lung patients being more susceptible to Covid-19 can likely be explained by the biology of those malignancies. Blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma arise when immune cells fail to function as they should, so impaired defenses could open the door to a viral infection. While Covid-19 ultimately affects multiple organ systems in the body, it is primarily a pulmonary disease attacking the lungs, so lungs damaged by cancer would be more vulnerable to Covid-19.

The amount of time since cancer diagnosis may contribute to risk of infection because people with lower immunity beginning cancer treatment have more potential exposures than other cancer patients. Newer cancer patients might see more people in hospitals or doctors’ offices, especially health care workers during the pandemic’s first months, when PPE was not recognized as essential or wasn’t available.

The reasons why Black people with Covid-19 and cancer had a greater risk of being hospitalized — 55.6% for Black patients vs. 43.2% for white patients — are probably societal, Berger said, although the study was not able to discern those factors. Societal inequities have loomed as large as medical comorbidities since the pandemic began: lower income, less opportunity to work remotely, crowded housing, poorer access to health care.

The study did account for comorbidities that put people at higher risk for worse Covid-19 illness: obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma. When those factors were taken out of the equation, Black people still had a higher risk of being infected: 32.5% vs. 19.1% for white people.

Robert Carlson, chief executive officer of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, said he was surprised by how much more vulnerable cancer patients were to Covid-19, in contrast to reports from earlier in the pandemic suggesting there was no substantially greater risk.

“The part that doesn’t surprise me is the disparity in outcomes between African Americans and whites,” said Carlson, who was not involved in the study. “We see that consistently across our health care system. The magnitude of the differences is pretty big. And it’s also consistent.”

A recent study reinforces the idea that racial disparities in Covid-19 stem from different levels of exposure to the virus. Gbenga Ogedegbe, the director of the division of health and behavior at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, led a study analyzing the health records of nearly 12,000 patients admitted to NYU’s Langone Health system during the March pandemic surge. That research, published Dec. 4 in JAMA Network Open, found that Black people had higher rates of infection and hospitalizations but in-hospital death rates were lower or comparable to those in white people. Death rates outside hospitals are disproportionately higher among Black people.

“The higher rates of mortality in Blacks are not due to inherent immunity or biology or comorbidity like cancer but due to exposure and other factors driven by structural inequities,” Ogedegbe said about the new paper based on national data, saying it confirmed his research and other studies. He was not involved in the new paper.

“The disparities noted are driven by exposure, access to care, and other social deprivation factors that are pervasive in Black communities,” he said. “I might add that this unfortunate Covid-19 pandemic has again revealed what we have known for a while: that your ZIP code is a better predictor of your life expectancy than your genetic code.”

Using the AI tool IBM Watson Health Explorys to parse electronic health records allowed the Case Western researchers to cast a wider net and include people who may not be seen in more traditional clinical trials, Berger pointed out.

“I don’t know if this is systemic racism, but part of the problem of doing clinical studies in this country is that studies are usually underpowered for underrepresented [groups] that for one reason or another, they’re not being included,” Berger said. “So when you’re talking about 73 million patients, you’re talking about a lot of underrepresented minorities.”

Carslon praised the speed of the AI analysis bringing these results to light now.

“I think we are quite frustrated by the lack of urgency in terms of addressing disparities,” he said, suggesting the pandemic could be “a tipping point, the crucial moment in history where perhaps we can start addressing this in a meaningful way.”

For now, Berger suggests doctors treating cancer should redouble their efforts to limit patients’ exposures to potentially infectious people in waiting rooms and consider oral medications that can be taken at home as opposed to drugs that must be infused in hospitals or clinics.

Doctors also urge patients to seek medical care for themselves or their children without delay, noting safety measures now in place prevent infection in doctors’ offices and hospitals.

Berger has one other piece of advice:

“Everybody should get vaccinated.”

That could be particularly important for cancer patients. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, among others, recommends vaccination against Covid-19. “Although cancer treatment may reduce the effectiveness of vaccines, we believe the COVID-19 vaccine is safe and could offer important protection for cancer patients, who may be at higher risk for complications from Covid-19.”

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‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal
Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19.
by Dan Diamond
Politico
12/16/2020 12:10 PM EST
Updated: 12/16/2020 01:22 PM EST

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A top Trump appointee repeatedly urged top health officials to adopt a "herd immunity" approach to Covid-19 and allow millions of Americans to be infected by the virus, according to internal emails obtained by a House watchdog and shared with POLITICO.

“There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD," then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote on July 4 to his boss, Health and Human Services assistant secretary for public affairs Michael Caputo, and six other senior officials.

"Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions etc. have zero to little risk….so we use them to develop herd…we want them infected…" Alexander added.

"[I]t may be that it will be best if we open up and flood the zone and let the kids and young folk get infected" in order to get "natural immunity…natural exposure," Alexander wrote on July 24 to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn, Caputo and eight other senior officials. Caputo subsequently asked Alexander to research the idea, according to emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee's select subcommittee on coronavirus.

Alexander also argued that colleges should stay open to allow Covid-19 infections to spread, lamenting in a July 27 email to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield that “we essentially took off the battlefield the most potent weapon we had...younger healthy people, children, teens, young people who we needed to fastly [sic] infect themselves, spread it around, develop immunity, and help stop the spread.”

Alexander was a top deputy of Caputo, who was personally installed by President Donald Trump in April to lead the health department's communications efforts. Officials told POLITICO that they believed that when Alexander made recommendations, he had the backing of the White House.

“It was understood that he spoke for Michael Caputo, who spoke for the White House,” said Kyle McGowan, a Trump appointee who was CDC chief of staff before leaving this summer. “That’s how they wanted it to be perceived.”

Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that herd immunity — a concept advocated by some conservatives as a tactic to control Covid-19 by deliberately exposing less vulnerable populations in hopes of re-opening the economy — was under consideration or shaped the White House's approach to the pandemic. “Herd immunity is not the strategy of the U.S. government with regard to coronavirus," HHS Secretary Alex Azar testified in a hearing before the House coronavirus subcommittee on Oct. 2.

In his emails, Alexander also spent months attacking government scientists and pushing to shape official statements to be more favorable to President Donald Trump.

For instance, Alexander acknowledges in a May 30 email that a draft statement from the CDC about how Covid-19 was disproportionately affecting minority populations was "very accurate," but he warned HHS and CDC communications officials that "in this election cycle that is the kind of statement coming from CDC that the media and Democrat [sic] antagonists will use against the president." The problems were "due to decades of democrat neglect," Alexander alleged.

Alexander also appeared to acknowledge that the White House's own push to let states wind down their Covid-19 restrictions was leading to a spike in cases.

"There is a rise in cases due to testing and also simultaneously due to the relaxing of restrictions, less social distancing," Alexander wrote in a July 24 email. "We always knew as you relax and open up, cases will rise."

The emails represent an unusual window on the internal deliberations of the Trump administration, and the tensions between political appointees like Alexander — a part-time professor at a Canadian university — and staff members in health agencies. On Sept. 16, HHS announced that Alexander would be leaving the department, just days after POLITICO first reported on his efforts to shape the CDC's famed Morbidity and Mortality and Weekly Reports and pressure government scientist Anthony Fauci from speaking about the risks of Covid-19 to children.

In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said that Alexander’s demands for herd immunity “absolutely did not” shape department strategy.

Donald Trump has said it is “terrific” that nearly 15 per cent of Americans have contracted the coronavirus since the outbreak began in the US, citing the “powerful vaccine" of herd immunity.

During an Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit on Tuesday [DECEMBER 8, 2020], Mr Trump was asked how Americans in areas with surging cases should protect themselves over Christmas ahead of the likely distribution of a vaccine.

In response, Mr Trump deferred to the Centres for Disease Control guidelines before citing growing immunity in the population as a result of the virus’ virulent spread throughout the country.

“Plus, you do have an immunity. You develop immunity over a period of time, and I hear we’re close to 15 per cent. I’m hearing that, and that is terrific,” Mr Trump said.

“That’s a very powerful vaccine in itself. And just tremendous progress has been made.”

-- Powerful vaccine in itself’: Trump says it’s ‘terrific’ that nearly 15 per cent of Americans got Covid: Daily death toll across US has exceeded 2,000 in recent days, by Louise Hall

“Dr. Paul Alexander previously served as a temporary Senior Policy Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and is no longer employed at the Department,” the spokesperson said.

Alexander did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Caputo, who took medical leave the same day that Alexander left the department, has referred previous inquiries to HHS.

Public health experts have decried calls to deliberately infect younger, healthier Americans with Covid-19, saying that it would unnecessarily put millions of people at risk of long-term complications and even death. “We certainly are not wanting to wait back and just let people get infected so that you can develop herd immunity. That's certainly not my approach,” Fauci said in September.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), who chairs the coronavirus subcommittee, said in a statement that the documents "show a pernicious pattern of political interference by Administration officials."

"As the virus spread through the country, these officials callously wrote, 'who cares' and 'we want them infected,'" Clyburn added. "They privately admitted they ‘always knew’ the President’s policies would cause a ‘rise’ in cases, and they plotted to blame the spread of the virus on career scientists."

Clyburn said that the documents — which the Trump administration only released to his subcommittee after the election, more than two months after his probe began — underscore why HHS must cooperate with his investigation and that CDC Director Redfield must appear for an interview about an email that he allegedly told staff to delete. Otherwise, "I will be forced to start issuing subpoenas," Clyburn said.

The email cache provided a real-time look at the administration’s deliberations as the Covid-19 crisis first began to rebound during the summer.

"So the bottom line is if it is more infectiouness [sic] now, the issue is who cares?" Alexander wrote in a July 3 email to the health department's top communications officials. "If it is causing more cases in young, my word is who cares…as long as we make sensible decisions, and protect the elderely [sic] and nursing homes, we must go on with life….who cares if we test more and get more positive tests."

"How can this be researched and proven true or false?" Caputo asked Alexander in one July 25 email exchange, after Alexander had emailed Hahn and nine top communications officials across HHS and FDA about the value of herd immunity.

Alexander wrote back with data that he said he'd pulled from several studies, including a link to a June 30 Quanta Magazine article about the "tricky math" of herd immunity.

"I did not want to look like a nut ball and if as they think and as I think this may be true ... several hard hit areas may have hit heard [sic] at 20% like NYC," Alexander added. "[T]hat's my argument….why not consider it?"

The health department has worked to distance itself from Alexander since his mid-September departure, and several Trump appointees said that Alexander was often isolated during his roughly six-month stint advising department officials.

“His rants had zero impact on policy and communications,” a senior administration official insisted. “Caputo enabled him to opine, but people pushed back and it even got to a point where Caputo told him to stop sending the emails.”

But McGowan, the former CDC chief of staff, said that Alexander was effective at delaying the famed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports and watering down guidance that came from his agency.

“He absolutely put pressure on the CDC on different guidance documents, on MMWRs,” McGowan said. “He wanted to change MMWRs that were already posted, which is just outrageous.”

While McGowan said that even though agency officials fended off Alexander’s demands to edit the morbidity and mortality reports, “it’s the type of political meddling that delayed guidance, delayed MMWRs from getting them out as quickly as possible to be effective,” McGowan added.

FILED UNDER: HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL,

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‘Powerful vaccine in itself’: Trump says it’s ‘terrific’ that nearly 15 per cent of Americans got Covid
Daily death toll across US has exceeded 2,000 in recent days
by Louise Hall
Independent.co.uk
Wednesday 09 December 2020 13:55

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Donald Trump has said it is “terrific” that nearly 15 per cent of Americans have contracted the coronavirus since the outbreak began in the US, citing the “powerful vaccine" of herd immunity.

During an Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit on Tuesday, Mr Trump was asked how Americans in areas with surging cases should protect themselves over Christmas ahead of the likely distribution of a vaccine.

In response, Mr Trump deferred to the Centres for Disease Control guidelines before citing growing immunity in the population as a result of the virus’ virulent spread throughout the country.

“Plus, you do have an immunity. You develop immunity over a period of time, and I hear we’re close to 15 per cent. I’m hearing that, and that is terrific,” Mr Trump said.

“That’s a very powerful vaccine in itself. And just tremendous progress has been made.”

The comments come as the country struggles with a resurgence of the virus, with record infections and a daily death toll that has exceeded 2,000 in recent days.

In total, more than 15 million Americans have been infected with the virus since the pandemic gripped the US in March, leading to the deaths of over 286,000 people.

Last week, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicted that a total of half a million people will have lost their lives by 1 April as a result of the disease.

In October, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it would be “unethical” to establish widespread immunity within a population by allowing the virus to spread and infect people.

"Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

During the conference, Mr Trump celebrated the expected approval of the first US vaccine, branding it a “miracle” while praising his administration’s effort for its production and distribution.

The US Food and Drug Administration made research data public for the first time that showed the vaccine was found to be strongly protective against Covid-19, making the approval of the shot seem likely and imminent.

If the vaccine is approved, the first recipients would be health care workers and nursing home residents, according to plans laid out by each state.

President-elect Joe Biden has told Americans that he will oversee the distribution of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days as president, but only if the Trump administration cooperates.

In the speech on Tuesday, Mr Biden outlined his immediate plans for his first term in office, including the reopening of most of the nation's schools and a mask-wearing mandate.

“Masking, vaccination, opening schools, these are the three key goals for my first 100 days,” he said.

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Here’s how the Trump administration crushed the C.D.C., according to two who were there.
by Noah Weiland
New York Times
Dec. 16, 2020
Updated 9:08 a.m. ET


Kyle McGowan, a former C.D.C. chief of staff, outside his home in Roswell, Ga., this month. He and his deputy have gone public with their disillusionment.
Audra Melton for The New York Times

Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, were installed in 2018 as two of the youngest political appointees in the history of the world’s premier public health agency, young Republicans returning to their native Georgia to dream jobs.

But what they witnessed during the coronavirus pandemic this year in the C.D.C.’s leadership suite shook them: Washington’s dismissal of science, the White House’s slow suffocation of the agency’s voice, the meddling in its messages and the siphoning of its budget.

In interviews this fall, the pair decided to go public with their disillusionment.

“Everyone wants to describe the day that the light switch flipped and the C.D.C. was sidelined. It didn’t happen that way,” Mr. McGowan said. “It was more of like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the C.D.C.”

Last week, the editor in chief of the C.D.C.’s flagship weekly disease outbreak reports — once considered untouchable — told House Democrats investigating political interference in the agency’s work that she was ordered to destroy an email showing Trump appointees attempting to meddle with their publication.

The same day, the outlines of the C.D.C.’s future took more shape when President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced a slate of health nominees, including Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital, as the agency’s new director, a move generally greeted with enthusiasm by public health experts.

“We are ready to combat this virus with science and facts,” she wrote on Twitter.

Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell — who left the C.D.C. together in August — said that mantra was what was most needed after a brutal year that left the agency’s authority crippled.

One of Ms. Campbell’s responsibilities was helping clear the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, a widely followed and otherwise apolitical guide on infectious disease renowned in the medical community. Over the summer, political appointees at the health department repeatedly asked C.D.C. officials to revise, delay and even scuttle drafts they thought could be viewed, by implication, as criticism of President Trump.

Often, Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell mediated between Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C. director, and agency scientists when the White House’s requests and dictates would arrive: edits from Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, and Kellyanne Conway, the former White House adviser, on choirs and communion in faith communities, or suggestions from Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and aide, on schools.

“Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won,” Mr. McGowan said.

A HAUNTING ARTIFACT: Mr. McGowan has held on to the email thread from Dec. 31, 2019, about a “cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China.”

Noah Weiland is a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, covering health care. He was raised in East Lansing, Michigan and graduated from the University of Chicago. @noahweiland

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There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’
by Michael R. Pence, Vice President of the United States
Whitehouse.gov
June 16, 2020

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In recent days, the media has taken to sounding the alarm bells over a “second wave” of coronavirus infections. Such panic is overblown. Thanks to the leadership of President Trump and the courage and compassion of the American people, our public health system is far stronger than it was four months ago, and we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy.

While talk of an increase in cases dominates cable news coverage, more than half of states are actually seeing cases decline or remain stable. Every state, territory and major metropolitan area, with the exception of three, have positive test rates under 10%. And in the six states that have reached more than 1,000 new cases a day, increased testing has allowed public health officials to identify most of the outbreaks in particular settings—prisons, nursing homes and meatpacking facilities—and contain them.

Lost in the coverage is the fact that today less than 6% of Americans tested each week are found to have the virus. Cases have stabilized over the past two weeks, with the daily average case rate across the U.S. dropping to 20,000—down from 30,000 in April and 25,000 in May. And in the past five days, deaths are down to fewer than 750 a day, a dramatic decline from 2,500 a day a few weeks ago—and a far cry from the 5,000 a day that some were predicting.

The truth is that we’ve made great progress over the past four months, and it’s a testament to the leadership of President Trump. When the president asked me to chair the White House Coronavirus Task Force at the end of February, he directed us to pursue not only a whole-of-government approach but a whole-of-America approach. The president brought together major commercial labs to expand our testing capacity, manufacturers to produce much-needed medical equipment, and major pharmaceutical companies to begin research on new medicines and vaccines. He rallied the American people to embrace social-distancing guidelines. And the progress we’ve made is remarkable.

We’ve expanded testing across the board. At the end of February, between Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labs and state public health facilities, the U.S. had performed only about 8,000 coronavirus tests. As of this week, we are performing roughly 500,000 tests a day, and more than 23 million tests have been performed in total.

We’ve also vastly expanded our supplies of crucial medical equipment. In March, there were genuine fears that hospitals in our hot spots would run out of personal protective equipment like N95 masks, gloves or, even worse, ventilators for patients battling respiratory failure. The Strategic National Stockpile hadn’t been refilled since the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009, and it had only 10,000 ventilators on hand.

Since then, we’ve increased the supply of personal protective equipment by the billions. Our administration launched Project Air Bridge—a partnership between the federal government and private companies—that, as of June 12, had conducted more than 200 flights from overseas to deliver more than 143 million N95 masks, 598 million surgical and procedural masks, 20 million eye and face shields, 265 million gowns and coveralls, and 14 billion gloves. In addition, we’ve worked with the private sector to ramp up ventilator production. Today, we have more than 30,000 ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile, and we’re well on our way to building 100,000 ventilators in 100 days. No American who required a ventilator was ever denied one.

We’ve also made great progress on developing therapeutics and a vaccine. Last month, the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences announced it would donate about 940,000 vials of its new drug remdesivir to treat more than 120,000 patients in the U.S. Under Operation Warp Speed, the federal government is already funding research into multiple vaccine candidates, and we are well on our way to having a viable vaccine by the fall.

But our greatest strength is the resilience of the American people. From the outset of this pandemic, the American people have stepped up and made great personal sacrifices to protect the health and safety of our nation. And it’s because of their embrace of social-distancing guidelines that all 50 states have begun to reopen in a safe and responsible manner.

The media has tried to scare the American people every step of the way, and these grim predictions of a second wave are no different. The truth is, whatever the media says, our whole-of-America approach has been a success. We’ve slowed the spread, we’ve cared for the most vulnerable, we’ve saved lives, and we’ve created a solid foundation for whatever challenges we may face in the future. That’s a cause for celebration, not the media’s fear mongering.

[admin]

Chris Christie Urges Americans To Wear A Mask
by Chris Cuomo
CNN
Dec 17, 2020



[Chris Christie]This message isn't for everyone. It's for all those people who refuse to wear a mask. You know, lying in isolation in ICU for seven days, I thought about how wrong I was to remove my mask at the White House. Today, I think about how wrong I was to let mask-wearing divide us. Especially since we now know you're twice as likely to get COVID-19 if you don't wear a mask. Because if you don't do the right thing, we could all end up on the wrong side of history. Please, wear a mask.

[Chris Cuomo] The line that grabbed me in that was "the wrong side of history". You could have ended it different ways. You could have said, "You may wind up sick, or worse. Your family might miss you." Instead you said "the wrong side of history." Why?

[Chris Christie] Because I think we'll look back on this pandemic for decades to come and see what we did right and what we did wrong. Now let me be clear, Chris, and you know this, because we've talked all during this pandemic -- I wore a mask for seven months. That's how I stayed healthy. I wore a mask; I socially distanced; I washed my hands ten, twelve times a day. It was just those four days when I went into the White House; I was tested every day when I went in, and I was under the impression that that was a safe place to take your mask off.

The message that I want to convey in that ad is, "There is no safe place from this virus." And even the place in the world which was being tested more than any other place, there's not a safe place from the virus. And so it's not just that I didn't wear a mask before -- I wore a mask before! But I let my guard down for just four days, and that put me into the ICU. I want folks to understand that in these next number of months before people are vaccinated, that we need to not let our guard down for a minute. There is no place to hide from this thing, and YOU DO NOT WANT TO GET THIS VIRUS! You may get lucky, and have very little symptoms. But you may get unlucky, and you might wind up dead. And so to me, the risk is not worth taking, and I want people to hear me say, that those four days when I didn't put my mask on, that was a mistake, and I was wrong, and I paid the price.

[admin]

LA County Death Counts
by Race/Ethnicity, Per 100,000
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health December 15, 2020



Asian: 58
Black: 82
Latino: 123
White: 44

[admin]

The Virus: What Went Wrong? (full film)
by Frontline PBS
Jun 16, 2020

[admin]

The Full Story of Trump and COVID-19
by NowThis News
Oct 6, 2020