Public Health Disasters
The situation with Hurricane Ida is very concerning especially with ongoing power outages and extreme weather conditions. Though recently downgraded to tropical depression yesterday, climate change helped make Hurricane Ida one of Louisiana’s worst storm.
Monday morning and news arrived that FDA fully approves Pfizer / BioNTech SE Coronavirus Vaccine as the first COVID-19 vaccine for prevention of #COVID19 disease in 16 years of age and older.
COVID-19 vaccines are working to protect against death along with some protection against hospitalization and mild infections. The latter protections seem to be declining in effectiveness plus Delta variant (and Lamba variant) are some of the reasons why US announce approval of a third shot (dose) for US population at 8 months or later after receiving the first two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech SE & Moderna.
A simple mix up of ingredients for the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca/University of Oxford coronavirus vaccines was said to occur at Emergent BioSolutions plant.
Yesterday, early phase 3 data from Oxford-AstraZeneca was published and shared about the latest clinical trial on its COVID-19 vaccine including a study conducted in United States. Post here: https://publichealthdisasters.com/2021/03/22/worlds-vaccine-found-79-percent-effective/. Now a possible rebuke?
“Right now, millions of people across the country are desperately suffering from opioid addiction. They need help and they need it now”
– Quote from joint statement issued by 20+ US State Attorney Generals
Over 20+ US State Attorney Generals reject the current bankruptcy plan offered by Purdue Pharma, who have ongoing claims against them for their role in the opioid epidemic in United States. Still no admittance from owners of company on wrongdoing, though this addiction crisis has killed more than 450,000 Americans.
100 million doses for US by the end of June 2021! A third COVID-19 vaccine option is now available in US. About 500 million doses are being purchased through Covax scheme for many global countries as well.
An unwanted milestone! The number of COVID-19 deaths in the United States may surpass 500,000 today. Many COVID-19 dashboard data platforms put the number at about 499,000 at time of writing.
The rise of the death toll has been growing at alarming rate. Roughly, the US coronavirus death toll since last May:
100,000: May 2020
200,000: September 2020
300,000: December 2020
400,000: January 2021
500,000: February 2021
Dr. Anthony Fauci was recently quoted that mask-wearing may continue into 2022. To ensure everyone’s safety, it is looking more and more like that.