Tag: vaccines

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FDA: Pfizer Vaccine May Be Stored In Conventional Freezers

Vials of COVID-19 vaccine

Vials of COVID-19 vaccine The FDA has announced the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine may be safely stored in conventional freezers which could help with the distribution and handling of the vaccine.

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it is allowing undiluted frozen vials of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to be transported and stored at conventional temperatures commonly found in pharmaceutical freezers for a period of up to two weeks.

This reflects an alternative to the preferred storage of the undiluted vials in an ultra-low temperature freezer between -80ºC to -60ºC (-112ºF to -76ºF). The change is being reflected in updates to the Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers Administering Vaccine (Vaccination Providers).

“Pfizer submitted data to the FDA to support this alternative temperature for transportation and storage. This alternative temperature for transportation and storage of the undiluted vials is significant and allows the vials to be transported and stored under more flexible conditions. The alternative temperature for transportation and storage will help ease the burden of procuring ultra-low cold storage equipment for vaccination sites and should help to get vaccine to more sites,” said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

In related news, a new study from the UK indicates a single dose of Pfizer’s vaccine cuts the number of asymptomatic infections and could significantly reduce the risk of transmission of the virus.

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News Round-Up: February 25, 2021

Some news items you might have missed: • Throwback Thursday: Thinking about days of dachshunds filling the house (above) . Not sad, just glad it happened.  • Instinct Magazine: Heavily armed police attempted to arrest a gay couple for kissing on a public beach in Tulum, Mexico, until a crowd gathered shouting down the officers’ actions. • Buzzfeed: Seventeen straight guys shared their same-sex hook-up encounters which ran the gamut from meh to hilarious. • Paramount Plus: The Real World Homecoming: New York, a multi-episode docu-series starring all seven of the original housemates from the classic MTV show, will debut on March 4. Running for 25 years on MTV before moving to Facebook Watch in 2019, the series helped launch the reality show genre. Word is the new series is being shot in that same NYC loft apartment.

• Axios: 41% of Republicans say they don’t plan to get a coronavirus vaccination if it’s available to them while 70% of Democrats and a plurality of independents (47%) say they do plan to get vaccinated. • The Hill: As the second impeachment trial failed to convict Donald Trump, two House Democrats plan to introduce legislation that would reform the Former Presidents Act of 1958 by stripping past presidents convicted of a felony of their $219,200 annual pension, office space and a budget to pay for staff. • The Advocate: Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL) put up a transgender Pride flag in a show of support for her daughter. Her congressional ‘neighbor,’ the hideous Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene R-GA) then trolled her with a sign reading “There are only two genders: male and female. Trust the science.” Oddly, Facebook removed Newman’s post calling her pro-trans remarks ‘hate speech.’

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New Ad Encourages Questions About Vaccines And Where To Find Answers

A new campaign from The Ad Council encourages people to ask questions about vaccinating against the coronavirus and where to get answers

A new campaign from The Ad Council encourages people to ask questions about vaccinating against the coronavirus and where to get answers
(image via The Ad Council)
A new $500 million ad campaign via The Ad Council focuses not only questions people may have about getting vaccinated for the coronavirus, but where to find answers. The message of the campaign, which will slowly shift as different groups become eligible, underscores that having questions is good because it’s normal to be cautious when something new comes along. And – answers are available. The ads will direct folks to getvaccineanswers.org with the slug line, “It’s up to you,” not to get vaccinated but to be informed.

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News Round-Up: February 24, 2021

French InstaHunk Yeti (via Instagram)
Some news items you might have missed: • InstaHunks: Just because I like looking at nice things…Hump Day moment via French hunk Yeti (above). Follow him here. • Instinct Magazine: A new documentary, Trans in Trumpland, shines new light on how the Trump administration affected the lives of transgender people. • Washington Blade: D.C.’s FOX 5 News anchor Blake McCoy, who’s gay, has been suspended from his job following a since-deleted tweet saying he is “annoyed obese people of all ages get priority vaccine access before all essential workers” like himself. He later apologized saying he regretted his words and asked “that you accept my sincere apology.” • CNBC: The Food and Drug Administration’s staff endorsed Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, a critical step in bringing a third shot to the U.S. marketplace. The vaccine’s level of protection varied by region demonstrating 66% effectiveness overall, 72% in the United States, 66% in Latin America and 57% in South Africa. • NPR: The cost of repairing damages from the attack on the U.S. Capitol and related security expenses have already topped $30 million and will keep rising, Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton told lawmakers on Wednesday. • CNN: The Manhattan district attorney’s office has subpoenaed financial records related to Steve Bannon’s crowd-funding border-wall effort, signaling that its criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s chief strategist is advancing. Bannon’s presidential pardon only shields him from federal, not state, crimes.

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Study Shows Pfizer Shot Prevents COVID Spread

Vials of vaccine

Vials of vaccine
(image via Depositphotos)
Some good news 🙂 Crunching the data in Israel (which has vaccinated more people per capita than any other country), it looks like the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doesn’t just prevent you from getting sick but also prevents you from passing the virus on to others. Via Bloomberg:

The vaccine, which was rolled out in a national immunization program that began Dec. 20, was 89.4% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infections, according to a copy of a draft publication that was posted on Twitter and confirmed by a person familiar with the work.

The companies and Israel’s Health Ministry worked together on the preliminary observational analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed. Nearly half of the population has had at least one dose of vaccine. Separately, Israeli authorities on Saturday said the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was 99% effective at preventing deaths from the virus.

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‘Religious Liberty?’ GOP Lawmaker Not Down With Vatican Requiring Vaccinations

Freshman Congressman Madison Cawthorn (R-NC)

Freshman Congressman Madison Cawthorn (R-NC)
Freshman Congressman Madison Cawthorn (R-NC)
Freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) stepped in it a bit after tweeting about a news report indicating the Vatican may fire employees who don’t get vaccinated for the coronavirus. The 25-year-old wrote, “This doesn’t sound legal… One shouldn’t be forced against their will to be vaccinated. The vaccination is there for those who want it, and are in need of it due to medical vulnerabilities.”

Folks were quick to note the irony that the conservative lawmaker defends the concept of “religious liberty” wherein churches make their own rules about how to go about business. As one commenter wrote, “This will age well when he demands religious organizations be allowed to fire people for who they have sex with.” Plus, the Vatican being a sovereign state, it fall outside of Cawthorn’s North Carolina congressional district.

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Polls: 40 Point Gap Between Those Who Will Or Won’t Get Vaccinated

The FDA has approved updated versions of COVID-19 vaccines

At this point, the most powerful weapons in science’s arsenal to contain the COVID-19 pandemic are the vaccines approved to combat the virus. But will Americans take it when it becomes available to them? From CNN:

In an average of Axios/Ipsos polls taken in January and February, 74% of Democrats said they’d either been vaccinated, or were extremely or very likely to get vaccinated as soon it’s available to them. Just 51% of Republicans said the same thing. Independents were in the middle of these two groups at 61%.

When Gallup asked respondents whether they would agree to get vaccinated if the vaccine were available to them right now, the partisan gap stood at 40 points (91% for Democrats and 51% for Republicans) in their most recent poll.

CNN goes on to report that those partisan differences could be dangerous for Republicans since friendships have become filtered by political leanings more than ever. A 2020 Pew Research Center poll showed 59 percent of Trump supporters said a lot of their close friends voted for Trump, 30 percent said some of their close friends did, and only 10 percent of Trump backers said few or none did. If Democrats get vaccinated but Republicans choose not to, it could lead to breakouts in those communities that lean conservative. Read the full report here. At this writing, there have been 27,428,733 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. and 475,786 COVID-19 related deaths. There are currently 67,023 people hospitalized due to the virus. In related news, Politico reports that doctors, nurses, and public health groups are trying to build confidence in Covid-19 vaccines on social media using coordinated campaigns to combat anti-vaccination disinformation.

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Did You Hear The QAnon Theory That COVID Vaccines Make You Gay?

A stunned man staring at his cell phone
A stunned man staring at his cell phone
(image via Depositphotos)

The nutjobs who voraciously grasp at all things QAnon are now buying into the wild conspiracy theory that receiving the COVID-19 vaccine turn people gay.

I kid you not…

QAnon is the highly discredited conspiracy theory that claims a secret cabal of Democratic politicians, government officials, and celebrities are Satan worshippers who operate a global child sex-trafficking ring.

Seriously…

Shayan Sardarizadeh, an investigative reporter for the BBC, recently shared on Twitter that two major QAnon channels on Telegram have “endorsed the baseless conspiracy theory that vaccinating children increases the probability of them identifying as homosexual or transgender at a later time.”

Among those pushing the crazy concept is an Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian, who told his Telegram followers, “Don’t go near those who have had the COVID vaccine. They have become homosexuals.”

Another QAnon account shared Tabrizian’s statement in agreement writing, “IMO he’s not far off. This is why we have gender confusion among our youth. Research how they put in hormones and alter DNA with their vaccines. Then pump our kids full of 50+ vaccines from birth!”

The Jerusalem Post reports the radical Tabrizian, who has nearly 210,000 Telegram followers, has a history of derogatory opinions about Western medicine.

Sheina Vojoudi, an Iranian dissident who led the country due to repression, told the Post many clerics in Iran relate perceived shortcomings to sexuality.

“The clerics in Iran are suffering from lack of knowledge and humanity,” said Vojoudi. “Actually, his goal of spreading nonsense is to try to scare people [out] of getting vaccinated, while the leader of the regime and other officials got Pfizer, and they don’t provide it for the people with the excuse that they don’t trust the West.”

LGBTQ activist Peter Tatchell adds that “Tabrizian combines scientific ignorance with a crude appeal to homophobia” in order to demonize both the vaccines and LGBTQ people.

The Post notes that since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Iranian government has executed somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 gay and lesbian people.

For the record – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has definitively concluded there is no such connection between vaccines and turning people gay or causing other issues like autism. Over on Twitter, folks shot down the silly conspiracy theory tying vaccines and turning people queer.

 

 

 

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US Purchases Additional 200 Million Vaccine Doses

President Biden told reporters on Thursday the federal government has now purchased an additional 200 million doses of vaccine to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Biden said the U.S. is on track to have enough supply of the vaccine for 300 million Americans by the end of July which works out to approximately 600 million doses. “We need more people to get vaccinated to beat this pandemic,” Biden said Thursday. “We’ve now purchased enough vaccine supply to vaccinate all Americans, and now we’re working to get those vaccines into the arms of people.”

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Fauci: Vaccines Should Be Available To All By April

Vials of vaccine

Vials of vaccine
(image via Depositphotos)
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s highest-ranking infectious-disease expert, told viewers of NBC’s The Today Show that he believes the availability of coronavirus vaccines should reach what he referred to as ‘open season’ by April. “By the time we get to April, that will be what I would call, for better wording, ‘open season,’ namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated,” said Fauci. This past Sunday, Fauci told NBC’s Meet The Press that he felt “things are going to get better as we get from February into March, into April, because the number of vaccine doses that will be available will increase substantially.”