COMMUNITY NEWS
Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers on Hold
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By Jondi Gumz
resident Biden’s Sept. 9 order requiring 3.5 million federal employees to be vaccinated for Covid-19 is on hold until September as a federal appeals court on June 26 agreed to revisit its April decision to reinstate the mandate. The 17 judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans will take up the matter. A three-judge panel had ruled 2-1 that U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown in Texas, who had ruled against the mandate, did not have jurisdiction. The lawsuit was filed by Feds for Medical Freedom, which has about 6,000 members, contending the president overstepped his authority. Attorney Bruce Castor Jr., representing the American Federation of Government Employees Local 918, said the Constitution doesn’t allow president to bypass Congress except in wartime. According to The Epoch Times, the court tentatively scheduled oral arguments for the week of Sept. 12. Brown wrote, “Stopping the spread of Covid-19 will not be achieved by overbroad policies like the federal worker mandate.” Covid’s Omicron variants emerging this year have proven to be extremely contagious, with case counts up and Dr. Anthony Fauci, 81, who heads the National Institutes of Health, Vice President Kamala Harris, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and Gov. Gavin Newsom – all vaccinated, boosted and testing positive, followed by quarantines, and Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau, twice this year. On June 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for children 6 months to 5 years old. Next, the California Department of Public Health approved Pfizer’s three-shot series and Moderna’s two-shot series. On June 21, Santa Cruz County Public Health announced children under 5 years of age are eligible to receive Covid-19 vaccines – interested parents can contact their doctor. Young Children & Covid ovid has claimed the lives of many elders, those 85 and older with preexisting medical conditions, but relatively few children. The federal Centers for disease Control & Prevention reports 400 children age 4 and under have died of Covid since it arrived in 2020. More than 1 million people in the U.S. have died of Covid, so young children represent a tiny percentage of deaths.
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In June, the American Association of Pediatrics reported that in 46 states plus Puerto Rico, the percentage of child Covid cases resulting in death was 0.00%-0.02%. Dr. Vinay Prasad, who has a master’s in public health, struggled to understand how Pfizer calculated 80% efficacy during the Omicron surge for the third booster shot for children under 5. Pfizer reported on its clinical trial involving 1,678 children — 10 got sick. Pfizer looked at Covid cases 7 days after dose 3, not cases before that. “You can’t exclude days,’ Prasad said, “You don’t get to say the first seven or 10 days don’t count.” Prasad said Pfizer’s “emergency use authorization” reports an analysis of this age group was “found not to be reliable” because of the low number of Covid cases. He point to the “confidence level” present by Pfizer, which ranged from 99.6% to minus 370%, a big range “that gives you little confidence that it’s a reliable result.” A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in April found 18% of parents of children under 5 plan to vaccinate them immediately, with planning to wait to see if there are side effects, 27% with no plans to use the Pfizer product on their children, and 11% saying thy would do so only if required for school or day care. Among parent concerns: Long-term effects. Could it be that young children represent an untapped windfall for the drug-makers? It all depends on whether these vaccines are added to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine schedule for children. See https://www. cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/ child-adolescent.html At a press event filmed and posted on Twitter, President Biden said Dr. Ashish Jha, who heads White House Crisis Response, is “the guy that’s running the CDC for me these days basically.” Missing Data Mning n June 21, Josh Guetzkow, a PhD at Hebrew University, posted the CDC response to his Freedom of Information Act request asking if the CDC is analyzing the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for “safety signals” from Covid-19 vaccines. This database, https://vaers.hhs. gov/, is where health care providers are to report adverse events after a vaccine. It was created after Congress passed a law
in 1986 protecting vaccine manufacturers from civil personal injury lawsuits and wrongful death lawsuits resulting from vaccine injuries. Observers were curious why there’s been no government study to evaluate if the injuries reported in VAERS were caused by a vaccine. An early briefing document said, “The CDC will perform Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) data mining on a weekly basis or as needed.” This would compare the proportion of an adverse event after getting a specific vaccine vs. the same adverse event after another vaccine. A higher rate would count as a safety signal to trigger a more thorough investigation. The June 16 letter from FOIA Officer Roger Andoh to Children’s Health Defense said that “no PRRs were conducted by CDC. Furthermore, data mining is outside of the agency’s purview, staff suggest you inquire with FDA.” Guetzkow called PRRs “one of the oldest, most basic and most well-established tools of pharmacovigilance.” Only a handful of countries, including China, Cuba, Venezuela, vaccinate children under 5. Denmark’s health minister, Seren Brostrom, has regrets, saying the country should not have vaccinated children for Covid. Cases Up he highly contagious coronavirus Omicron subvariants have pushed up case numbers in California.
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Santa Cruz County cases are on a rollercoaster, 1,715 on May 23, then 1,472 on May 26 and 1,705 on June 13, then 2,000 on June 27. This spring, the biggest spurt, May 9, after Mother’s Day, was 182 cases, followed by four days of 128 or more cases. After Memorial Day came five days of 113 or more cases per day. Then 179 on June 6 — graduation? — low compared to 1,312 on Jan. 20. On Tuesday, the state reported 27 people hospitalized with Covid, one in intensive care, in Santa Cruz County. With 55,000+ county residents having had the infection, natural immunity may be a factor. The county posted one more death in the past two weeks. All four of the most recent deaths were over 65 with medical conditions, and vaccinated. Santa Cruz County updates the numbers on Mondays and Thursdays. Workplace rules adopted in California require unvaccinated and vaccinated workers to be treated the same; no mask mandate for the unvaccinated. Employees testing positive can return to work masked five days later. Santa Cruz County along with much of California is rated “medium” transmission by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its COVID tracking map. Hotspots are Monterey County, Central Valley and most of Florida, all rated high risk. “Covid Update” page 9
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www.tpgonlinedaily.com Aptos Times / July 1st 2022 / 7
