Wednesday, January 18, 2023
DOJ Still Fighting in Court for Forced Masking on Transportation
On April 18, 2022 U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down President Joe Biden's mask mandate for air and rail transportation. The Department of Justice quickly appealed the decision after a request from the Centers for Disease Control.
"To protect CDC’s public health authority beyond the ongoing assessment announced last week, CDC has asked DOJ to proceed with an appeal in Health Freedom Defense Fund, Inc., et al., v. Biden, et al. It is CDC’s continuing assessment that at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health. CDC will continue to monitor public health conditions to determine whether such an order remains necessary. CDC believes this is a lawful order, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health," the CDC released in a statement.
At the time, the White House admitted the appeal was to preserve the power of the federal government.
When the mandate was lifted, flights erupted with cheers.
Nearly a year later, federal attorneys are still working to force masking on transportation.
The Eleventh Circuit of Appeals will hear arguments over a federal mask mandate on Tuesday, Jan. 17.
Beginning at 9 a.m., attorneys will present arguments over the transportation mask mandate.
The appeal drew criticism from the U.S. Travel Association, which along with other industry groups had been pressuring the Biden administration for months to end the mask mandate for travel.
The Health Freedom Defense Fund outlined arguments in court documents, stating they believe the CDC has no legal authority to adopt a mask mandate.
Following today's hearing, the court will decide whether to affirm the decision to strike down the mask mandate. A judge will draft a written decision which may go through several rounds before a majority of the court agrees and the written decision is published.
DOJ continues this fight despite President Joe Biden declaring the pandemic is over and after a recent admission from White House COVID Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha that masks don't work to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
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Omicron Subvariant XBB.1.5 Could Be More Likely to Infect Vaccinated: NYC Health Officials
The Omicron XBB.1.5 variant of COVID-19 is more likely to infect individuals who have been vaccinated, according to New York City health officials.
“Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 now accounts for 73 percent of all sequenced COVID-19 cases in NYC. XBB.1.5 is the most transmissible form of COVID-19 that we know of to date and may be more likely to infect people who have been vaccinated or already had COVID-19,” the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene wrote on Twitter on Jan. 13.
Despite this, the department urged New Yorkers to get vaccinated and receive the updated COVID-19 booster shot, stating that doing so “is still the best way to protect yourself from hospitalization and death from COVID-19, including from these new variants.”
The XBB.1.5 variant is quickly becoming the dominant subvariant in the United States. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that XBB.1.5 accounted for an estimated 43 percent of COVID-19 cases in the country for the week ending Jan. 14.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this month that the subvariant is on the rise in the United States and Europe and has now been identified in more than 25 countries.
The subvariant has now overtaken the BQ.1.1 subvariant, which was first identified in September, and which now accounts for an estimated 28.8 percent of cases in the country, according to CDC data.
XBB.1.5 Unlikely to Increase Severity
Although there has been a surge in XBB.1.5 cases, the WHO has stated that the variant does not have any mutations known to increase the severity of the virus in individuals.
In a risk assessment (pdf) published on Jan. 11, the health body said that XBB.1.5, based on its genetic characteristics and early growth rate estimates, may contribute to a surge in cases around the world but it “does not carry any mutation known to be associated with potential change in severity.”
Barbara Mahon, head of the CDC’s proposed Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Viruses Division, also told CBS News on Jan. 6 that there is no suggestion that XBB.1.5 is more severe than previous strains of Omicron.
The WHO in its risk assessment did, however, note that “the overall confidence in the assessment is low” owing to a lack of data on the subvariant, most of which come from the United States, and said that more data and laboratory testing is needed to know for sure how severe the subvariant is.
The health body also noted that XBB.1.5 is one of the COVID-19 subvariants that is most resistant to antibodies acquired from vaccination or previous infection.
According to the CDC, approximately 666,511,603 vaccine doses have been administered in the United States, of which 268,556,888 people have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 229,359,062 have completed the primary series of vaccinations.
Vaccine Effectiveness Only Lasts 3 Months
Additionally, 15.9 percent of the U.S. population aged 5 and over have received the updated bivalent booster shot.
In an interview with Science News on Jan. 13, infectious diseases specialist Peter Chin-Hong of the University of California, San Francisco, stated that vaccinations are likely to provide just three months of protection against the XBB.1.5 variant of COVID-19.
“The new updated boosters generally work a little better than the old vaccines in terms of overall efficacy and preventing infection. But with these new slippery variants like XBB.1.5 … if you’re looking to prevent infections, even a mild infection, the vaccines are probably going to last maybe three months,” Chin-Hong said.
“But if you’re talking about preventing me from dying or going to the hospital, those vaccines are going to give me a boost of protection for many, many months, probably until next winter for most people. For older people, older than 65, if they’re not boosted today, then it’s a problem,” the infectious diseases specialist added.
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Here's Why the CDC Just Launched 'Additional Investigation' of COVID Vaccine Safety
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Friday afternoon — in something of a pre-weekend news dump — that the agency's Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) has "met the statistical criteria to prompt additional investigation into whether there was a safety concern for ischemic stroke in people ages 65 and older who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent."
It's worth noting that the CDC's VSD is different from its Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
The CDC's Friday updated emphasized that "[t]o date, no other safety systems have shown a similar signal and multiple subsequent analyses have not validated this signal" and that "[n]o change is recommended in COVID-19 vaccination practice" at this time while an additional investigation is conducted.
The CDC explains more about the signal that met its threshold for additional investigation:
Rapid-response investigation of the signal in the VSD raised a question of whether people 65 and older who have received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent were more likely to have an ischemic stroke in the 21 days following vaccination compared with days 22-44 following vaccination.
This preliminary signal has not been identified with the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent. There also may be other confounding factors contributing to the signal identified in the VSD that merit further investigation.
Furthermore, it is important to note that, to date, no other safety systems have shown a similar signal and multiple subsequent analyses have not validated this signal:
A large study of updated (bivalent) vaccines (from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services database revealed no increased risk of ischemic stroke
A preliminary study using the Veterans Affairs database did not indicate an increased risk of ischemic stroke following an updated (bivalent) vaccine
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) managed by CDC and FDA has not seen an increase in reporting of ischemic strokes following the updated (bivalent) vaccine
Pfizer-BioNTech’s global safety database has not indicated a signal for ischemic stroke with the updated (bivalent) vaccine
Other countries have not observed an increased risk for ischemic stroke with updated (bivalent) vaccines
Although the totality of the data currently suggests that it is very unlikely that the signal in VSD represents a true clinical risk, we believe it is important to share this information with the public, as we have in the past, when one of our safety monitoring systems detects a signal. CDC and FDA will continue to evaluate additional data from these and other vaccine safety systems. These data and additional analyses will be discussed at the upcoming January 26 meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
So while the CDC is firm in its belief that a "true clinical risk" does not exist in terms of ischemic stroke in the three weeks after a person over 65 received the Pfizer COVID vaccine, there have been enough reports for a signal to trigger further investigation which has not yet allowed the potential risk to be ruled out.
Dr. Marty Makary shared the CDC's update on vaccine safety and issued a call for the raw data that prompted the additional level of review to be made public, allowing Americans and their doctors to have all the information that exists to use in their decisions about vaccination.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) Also here
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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