“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
— William Wilberforce
I wasn’t pleased with what seemed to be some selective disclosure, if that was, in fact, the case. I was not on the call. I do own AstraZeneca in the fund for reasons unrelated to the COVID-19 vaccine. Ironically, it relates to their current drugs in their pipeline. But one never wants to see selective […]
News update, Sept. 15, 2020—U.S. regulators paused AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial in the U.S. while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launches an investigation of its own into a serious side effect in an unnamed patient in Britain. “The highest levels of NIH are very concerned,” said Dr. Avindra Nath, intramural clinical director and a leader […]
Story Highlights More adults in the U.S. are expressing doubts about the safety of a newly licensed COVID-19 vaccine that might become available this year. The number of poll respondents planning on getting a new coronavirus vaccine as soon as it is FDA approved has fallen from a reported high of 50 to 60 percent […]
Biotechnology company Novavax, Inc. of Gaithersburg, Maryland recently made public the results of the Phase 1 part of a Phase 1/2 human clinical trial for its experimental NVX-CoV2373 vaccine for COVID-19. According to Novavax, “NVX‑CoV2373 was created using Novavax’s recombinant nanoparticle technology to generate antigen derived from the coronavirus spike (S) protein and contains Novavax’s […]
An 11-year-old girl died on Aug. 30, 2020 after receiving an HPV (human papillomavirus infection) vaccine for cervical cancer at her school in Maha Rat, Thailand. It is unclear how much time elapsed between the time the girl was vaccinated and her death. It is also not clear if the death was caused by the […]
The government of Canada has signed deals to purchase COVID-19 vaccines from four pharmaceutical companies when their vaccines are approved to be given to the public. According to Canada’s Minister of Public Services and Procurement Anita Anand, the Canadian government has contracts with Janssen Pharmaceuticals (a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer […]
The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Sept. 2 weekly update on COVID-19 mortality in the U.S., which is published by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), reported 170,566 deaths “involving COVID-19” that occurred between Feb. 1, 2020 and Aug. 29, 2020.1 During the same time period there were 1,841,678 deaths from […]
While much of the world is focused on coronavirus, there is another illness on the rise here in Canada. Researchers from McMaster University found that at least 13 people have had scurvy in the last nine years just in the city of Hamilton, Ontario alone. More than 50 other people had low vitamin C levels. […]
Story Highlights Rapid decline of neutralizing antibodies following COVID-19 infection in some people have led to concerns that immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus Is temporary. However, several recent studies have shown a presence of virus-specific T-cells that remain, including among patients with mild or asymptomatic infections. Long-lasting immunity after recovery from COVID-19 infection may be […]
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued new updates for influenza vaccines for 2020–2021 “flu season,” primarily for Fluzone and Fluad vaccines. In November 2019, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licensed inactivated injectable Fluzone High-Dose Quadrivalent (HD-IIV4) for use in persons aged […]