Tag Archives: COVID

Is this Progress?

7 Replies

NY Times
Author Headshot By Alexandra Sifferlin. New York Times

Health and Science Editor, Opinion

Amid all the other news lately, it might have been easy to miss Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest big move as health secretary: the firing and replacement of the committee of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. In a guest essay for Times Opinion, the immunologist Dr. Michael Mina called it a “Code Red” moment for U.S. vaccine policy.

The recommendations of the C.D.C.’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices help determine the vaccines doctors provide to patients and whether insurers will cover them. Kennedy’s abrupt removal of all 17 members is “a warning of what might be coming,” Mina wrote, explaining that “a reconstituted committee will be in a position to more directly rearrange, alter or dismantle the national vaccine schedule as it sees fit.”

Since we published Mina’s essay last week, Kennedy announced eight new committee members, including people who have spoken critically about vaccines. There are still more spots to fill, and the committee is scheduled to meet soon to discuss immunization for Covid-19, RSV, Lyme disease, human papillomavirus and more. If the recommendation for a vaccine is withdrawn, patients who still opt to receive it could be left footing the bill.

As Mina outlines in his essay, the committee shake-up isn’t the only change. The administration has also canceled contracts for the development of new vaccines and revised Covid vaccine guidance. Mina has closely studied vaccine-preventable diseases and also regularly questions consensus, so I was curious about his perspective on which changes may be less concerning and which are keeping him up at night. “When once-reliable guidance is muddied by conspiracy thinking, the risks to vaccines and the health of Americans increase,” he wrote. “This is a precarious moment for vaccine policy — the damage may not be obvious until it’s too late.”

READ THE ESSAY HERE

See also, THIS article in which Carolyn Kennedy says there is no worse person to be in charge of the nation’s health.

The Visitor for dVerse Poets “Personifying the Abstract,” Mar 26, 2025

11 Replies

 

The Visitor
(In a Time of Covid)

My day is a guest who arrives too early,
starting the party without me to the insistent drumbeat
of a distant all-night party not yet over.
Its music sketches a portrait of my distant past:
wild nights, the sharp bite of tequila,
casual passion draped across my back.

Kukla the girl cat’s clever claws push me from my bed. 
Other than her insistent cries for desayuno,
this new day written across my life
comes with invisible directions. 
It smells like fresh-blooming plumeria
and tastes like Nescafé with Coffee-Mate and stevia.

It is too tame, this safe life with so many hand-washings
that they rise to my tongue and foam as I speak to myself in the mirror,
keeping six feet of distance even with myself
as I wait for the arrival and my capture
by this distant threat creeping ever closer.

“Sangre de Cristo,” mutters Jesus the water vendor,
taking his own name in both vein and vain as he
reminds me to keep my distance—
La señora, no matter how generous a tipper, now a threat.
I sweep his footsteps from the doorway,
set them on fire and gather their ashes for a poem.

The birds sing their way into my verses,
as does the snake that lies coiled in my kitchen sink.
I taste the language of all of them,
real life as surreal as any dream—
this world a wasp nest,
each of us sealed up in our individual cell.

Without a life, I write one for myself.
You are invited to join it here on my sanitary screen.
Make your rejoinders more clever than Alexa’s or Siri’s,
so I can dispense with the both of them.
Imagine me touching your words I cannot hear,
and make them less sharp than what you might be feeling.

A stream of family music from below
flows up the mountainside to pool in my ears.
I breathe the perfume of that family.
I savor its taste—tamarind, lime and salt,
the homeyness of bland tortillas—
and hope they are kept safe there.

For dVerse Poets. To read other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.

Threat of Omicron Keeps China Walled Off: Washington Post

Leave a reply

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/10/omicron-china-covid-vaccines/?fbclid=IwAR37cnr2pT0EbeYUTDbm8b3cxzRjedIiGTMxYVSZkxupCtON04VlOu00vms

CDC Stresses Dangers of Delta Strain of Covid. Wear a Mask!!!!!!

3 Replies

Please read the full report by clicking on the link below this photo.

https://news.yahoo.com/youre-vulnerable-cdc-presentation-warns-044715049.html?.tsrc=notification-brknews

 

Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water!

9 Replies

 

I just received this Facebook post from a friend in the states. If you have been vaccinated and think it is safe to let down your guard, think again. Here is her story:

Joe and I tested positive for Delta Covid-19 yesterday. We were vaccinated with Pfizer, Joe in Feb, and me in March. We had to INSIST that our doctor test us yesterday. He kept saying, “no, you’ve been vaccinated, this is just a virus.” This tells us there are more people out there with Covid who think they have something else. Also, Joe’s symptoms are not mild…he already has some pneumonia. I’m reporting this to stress how important it is to WEAR YOUR MASK. Please, please, please, wear your mask in public. We trusted the vaccine to protect us, we were wrong to do so! Already this morning we know it’s very possible Joe will need to be hospitalized. Kris and Jeffery have no symptoms. Anyone who has been around us in the last week, please get tested.

 

 

Associated Press Reports US life expectancy in 2020 saw biggest drop since WWII

3 Replies

“NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. life expectancy fell by a year and a half in 2020, the largest one-year decline since World War II, public health officials said Wednesday.” Covid accounts for 11 percent of the drop. Drug use, homicides, overcrowding and lack of healthcare accounts for much of the rest. See the facts HERE.

 

Performance in Combatting COVID, Country by Country

4 Replies

 

Click on link below to see how countries rate in their response to Covid:

https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/

Recent Info on Russian Vaccine

2 Replies

https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2021/02/10/russia-sputnik-vaccine-underestimated/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2f73f80%2F602367569d2fda4c88dc127a%2F596a96eeade4e20ee373f545%2F13%2F75%2F602367569d2fda4c88dc127a

A First-Person Description of the Covid Virus

18 Replies

Vin Prest on “Life is a Rusty Rollercoaster” wrote this vivid account of his battle with Covid. Since his is the only detailed report I’ve read that was told by someone who actually experienced the disease, I’m reblogging it here. I think, given the underrating of the experience by our President, that it is important that people hear about the first-hand experience of someone else:


Click on this link to read the rest of his account: https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/181911079/posts/65