LGBTQ news and entertainment
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, resigned from his position on Wednesdayin a scathing social media post. Continue reading “CDC Vaccine Chief Slams Health Secretary In Fiery Resignation Letter”
Taylor Frey and Kyle Dean Massey (image via Lifetime)
In a rare move, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overruled an advisory panel’s decision to not recommend Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine booster shots for health care workers and others who risk contracting the virus at work. Continue reading “CDC Director Overrules Advisory Panel, Recommends Boosters For Healthcare Workers”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new study which shows people who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 are 29.2 times as likely to be hospitalized due to the virus versus those who are fully vaccinated. Continue reading “Study: Unvaccinated People 29 Times As Likely To Be Hospitalized By COVID”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will change course on Tuesday and recommend that people vaccinated for the coronavirus return to wearing face masks indoors in parts of the country with substantial Covid-19 transmission Continue reading “CDC Will Urge Vaccinated To Wear Masks Indoors In High Transmission Areas Of US”
As vaccinations for the coronavirus have begun to slow, federal health officials announced today that those Americans who are fully vaccinated will no longer need face masks when exercising outdoors, or at small outdoor gatherings or indoors with family members of their household. From the New York Times:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped short of telling those people that they could shed their masks altogether in outdoor settings — citing the worrying risk that remains for transmitting the coronavirus, unknown vaccination levels among people in crowds and the still high-caseloads in some regions of the country.
Federal health officials and President Biden were announcing the updated advice on Tuesday, linking the news with the administration’s public campaign to get most American adults vaccinated by summer and trying to offer reassurances that some semblance of normal life can return.
But the C.D.C. is maintaining advice on other safety measures, saying vaccinated adults should continue wearing masks and staying six feet apart in large public spaces, like outdoor performance or sports events, indoor shopping malls and movie theaters, where the vaccination and health status of others would be unknown. And they still should avoid medium and large gatherings, crowds and poorly ventilated spaces, officials said.
Vaccinated people should continue to wear masks and keep their distance in large public spaces where the vaccination and health status of others would be unknown, the CDC said. https://t.co/PtjlDAw6G5 pic.twitter.com/0QS7LTjJmy
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 27, 2021
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hit the pause button for injections of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine after 6 women developed a rare blood clotting disease. From the New York Times:
All six were women between the ages of 18 and 48 and all developed the illness within one to three weeks of vaccination. One woman died and a second woman in Nebraska has been hospitalized in critical condition.
As of Monday, nearly seven million people in the United States have received Johnson & Johnson shots so far without any other serious adverse reactions reported, and roughly nine million more doses have been shipped out to the states, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
At this point, there’s no hard evidence there’s a connection between the blood clotting and the J&J vaccine. With 6 patients out of nearly 7 million vaccinated with the vaccine, experts point out the odds of getting COVID-19 are far greater. But, the development is sure to cause even more vaccine hesitancy in those who were already unsure about getting vaccinated. There are no reports that the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines – which are based on a different scientific approach – have been connected to similar blood clotting.
How worried should you be about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and blood clots?
Experts have yet to determine to what extent, if any, the vaccine is related to an extremely rare clotting disorder, and said for most people, the benefits outweigh the risks. https://t.co/Es6o7pJFhZ
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 13, 2021
Just 6 out of 7 million got blood clots from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine
316 people are shot in the U.S. every single day, 106 of them dying
By that logic, shouldn’t we halt guns, too?
— Lindy Li (@lindyli) April 13, 2021
Today, Dr. Fauci made a wonderful point on vaccine safety for those still hesitant:
The fact that the FDA and CDC decided to pause the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after ONLY 6 out of 6.8 million doses raised concern, it's proof of how stringent they are on overall vaccine safety.
— Jake Lobin (@JakeLobin) April 13, 2021
If you got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, you apparently have less than one in a million chance of developing blood clots, and even then they're unlikely to be fatal.
Meanwhile, COVID has killed about one out of every five hundred Americans.
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) April 13, 2021
Car crashes kill 124 people per 1M every year, yet we give licenses to any teen with a pulse.
154 in a million people go to the ER for Tylenol ODs every year, yet that's OTC!
And yet we're halting the J&J vax because 6 in 6.8 million got a blood clot?https://t.co/dRrIQdgjVp
— Tiana Lowe (@TianaTheFirst) April 13, 2021
Donald Trump
The new instructions are contained in a little-noticed document posted this week on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports. From now on, H.H.S., and not the C.D.C., will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, how many beds and ventilators are available, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.
Officials say the change will streamline data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and the drug remdesivir. Some hospital officials welcome the move, saying it will relieve them of responding to requests from multiple federal agencies, though others said the C.D.C. should be collecting the data.
“The C.D.C. is the right agency to be at the forefront of collecting the data,” said Dr. Bala Hota, the chief analytics officer at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Public health experts have long expressed concerns that the administration is politicizing science and undermining the disease control centers; four former C.D.C. directors, spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations, said as much in an opinion piece published Tuesday in The Washington Post. The data collection shift reinforced those fears.
“Then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. Is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, cos you see it gets on the lungs and does a tremendous number on it. Can you check that?” pic.twitter.com/rOXY9a8A5l
— Jelle Simons (@jelle_simons) July 14, 2020
Donald Trump at press conference (image via White House)
White House officials are putting a target on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, positioning the agency as a coronavirus scapegoat as cases surge in many states and the U.S. falls behind other nations that are taming the pandemic.
Trump administration aides in recent weeks have seriously discussed launching an in-depth evaluation of the agency to chart what they view as its missteps in responding to the pandemic including an early failure to deploy working test kits, according to four senior administration officials.
Part of that audit would include examining more closely the state-by-state death toll to tally only the Americans who died from Covid-19 directly rather than other factors. About 120,000 people in the U.S. have died of the coronavirus so far, according to the CDC’s official count.
Politically, Trump aides have also been looking for a person or entity outside China to blame for the coronavirus response and have grown furious with the CDC, including its public health guidance and actions on testing, making it a prime target.
SCOOP: WH aides eyeing an an evaluation of the CDC to chart its missteps on coronavirus. Also thinking of putting more political appointees at agency and shrinking its mission, as Trump ppl look for a Covid-19 scapegoat w/@adamcancryn: https://t.co/Ji2pArPGqr
— Nancy Cook (@nancook) June 23, 2020
1) Trump’s advisers are targeting a new scapegoat in order to shift blame away from his utterly catastrophic botching of coronavirus: The CDC. This is deeply depraved on its own. But there’s a backstory here that simply must not get memory-holed.https://t.co/xsZ06HH4yf
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) June 23, 2020
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a startling rise in the number of cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia in 2018. The CDC’s annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report indicates more than 2.4 million infections of the three STDs were reported in 2018, an increase of more than 100,000 from 2017. The New York Times reports the CDC points to multiple factors for the increase:
• A decline in condom use among young people and men who have sex with men
• Increased screening among some groups
• Cuts to sexual health programs at the state and local level
There were more than 115,000 cases of syphilis reported in 2018 representing an increase of 71 percent since 2014. Gonorrhea cases increased by 5 percent in 2018 to more than 580,000. That’s the highest number reported to the center since 1991. And chlamydia diagnoses rose by 3 percent in 2018 to more than 1.7 million cases. Again, a record-breaking figure for the CDC.
The report noted that gay and bisexual men were disproportionately represented in the increase in infection rates. Fifty-four percent of all syphilis cases in 2018 were found in men who have sex with men (MSM).
Unfortunately, these figures may not be a full accounting of STDs in America today as many cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia go undiagnosed.
While we’re big proponents of the use of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), it’s easy to wonder if MSM are putting themselves at more risk than they imagine by not using condoms…?