Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers on Hold, By Jondi Gumz

COMMUNITY NEWS

Vaccine Mandate for Federal Workers on Hold

By Jondi Gumz

President 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

Covid 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.

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

On 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

The highly contagious coronavirus Omicron subvariants have pushed up case numbers in California.

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

“Covid Update” from page 7

Subvariants of omicron (and waning immunity from vaccines) are behind the latest wave of cases.

The CDC said BA.4 comprises 36.6% of new cases and BA.5 15.7%.

Hospitalizations from Omicron peaked in January, then plummeted and have been rising albeit slowly.

The state Department of Public Health reports test positivity, 23% in January, has ticked up from 1.7% to 13.2% and hospitalizations — 20,000 in January —dropped to 950 before reaching 3,400.

Test to Treat

Santa Cruz County offers “Test to Treat” sites, including the three OptumServe testing sites, open to anyone regardless of insurance or documentation status. To make an appointment, visit https://lhi. care/covidtesting/. The closest are the Santa Cruz County Governmental Center in Santa Cruz and the Felton library.

Test positivity, 12.25% in January, was 7.35% on June 27, with 270 cases, down from 321, according to the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, which has completed 529,000 tests with Inspire Diagnostics.

For those who test positive and are at risk of severe illness, the CDC recommends asking your doctor for a prescription for Paxlovid, pills developed by Pfizer for higher risk individuals age 12 or older and given emergency use authorization by the FDA in December. Lagevrio, produced by Merck, also got emergency use authorization for mild to moderate Covid.

Paxlovid side effects are: https:// www.fda.gov/media/155051/download

The new subvariants are very contagious and make people miserable but are not dangerous as Delta.

There are more people hospitalized in California, triple from where it was — but ICU admissions are rising much more slowly, and the number of deaths per day has not spiked up.

The CDC estimates almost 60 percent of the populace — including 76% percent of children over age 5 — have had Omicron or another coronavirus variant.

Normal

Aptos is gearing up for the World’s Shortest Parade 10 a.m. July 4 in Aptos Village.

The city of Scotts Valley will celebrate Sunday, July 3, with a parade at 3 p.m. and then live music, food, games and fireworks at Skypark.

Capitola’s Twilight Concerts on Wednesday nights began on June 15.

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk hosts live music Thursdays on the Colonnade, with Friday night movies.

Airlines Drop Flights

American and United dropped flights from their schedule due to a pilot shortage. Off-duty Delta pilots flying record amounts of overtime said they would picket for a pay increase and a schedule changes.

With summer travel surging, the disruptions are expected to last to September.

The Biden administration dropped a 16-month requirement that people test negative for COVID-19 before boarding a flight to the U.S. That decision may boost international travel.

AFAR.com reported European travel is “a mess,” with long waits due to staff shortages.

Visitors can freely enter Greece, Austria, and Croatia, according to https:// www.dw.com/en/what-are-the-covidentry-rules-for-travelers-to-europeancountries/a-58017284

Airline masks are optional in the U.S.

To read Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizzelle’s ruling see https:// ecf.flmd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/ show_public_doc?2021-01693-53-8-cv

Omicron Less Deadly

The Omicron variants are less deadly than the Delta variant, which raged in 2021.

Santa Cruz County reported 41 Covid deaths after Omicron, compared to 225 as of Dec. 15, before Omicron.

One statistic is similar: 799 to 81% of those who died had medical conditions.

Why do people fear Omnicron?

They may have a medical condition (diabetes, obesity, asthma, high blood pressure).

Half of Americans do, so they are at higher risk for severe Covid illness.

So are people 85 and older.

California reports 83.9% of residents age 5 and up have had at least one shot.

On the CDC Covid tracker, Santa Cruz County reports 91.2% of residents age 5 and up have at least one shot and 83.3% fully vaccinated.

Fully vaccinated means having two shots (Pfizer or Moderna) or one Johnson & Johnson shot. All were developed for the initial Wuhan Covid-19 strain.

For Omicron, a booster shot is needed after the Pfizer vaccine, because protection against hospitalization wanes after three months, a Kaiser Permanente study of 11,000 hospital admissions and emergency room visits found.

On Wednesday, the FDA advisory committee recommended including an Omicron component for booster vaccines. The challenge is that, like the flu, it’s hard to know which variant will dominate in the future.

Santa Cruz County Office of Education reports cases in local schools peaked at 4,407 on Jan. 27, dropped to 44 on April 1, rose to 1,025 on May 23 and dropped to 442 on June 11 and now 270.

The 14-day positivity rate, 12.25% on January, dropped to .79%, then rose to 5.4% and 7.35%.

Myocarditis

In a 2022 report in the Journal of American Medical Association online, Dr. Matthew Oster of the CDC reported the government’s VAERS database received 1,991 reports of myocarditis after one dose of mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine and 1,626 met the CDC’s definition for probable or confirmed myocarditis.

Oster’s conclusion: “The risk of myocarditis after receiving mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines was increased across multiple age and sex strata and was highest after the second vaccination dose in adolescent males and young men. This risk should be considered.”

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart, which can lead to clots, a stroke or heart attack.

Public health officials say the scientific consensus is that Covid vaccines are safe, but some are skeptical about relying on science from drug-makers, which saw profits rise in 2021.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, a 2005 law allowing him to provide legal protection to companies making or distributing critical medical supplies such as vaccines unless there’s “willful misconduct” by the company. This protection lasts until 2024.

A military whistleblower told journalist Michael Nevradakis that 120,000 troops remain unvaccinated and the U.S. Army may push back the June 30 deadline to comply. according to Children’s Health Defense.

After mRNA COVID-19 vaccines were mandated for the military in 2021, cases of heart attack, pulmonary embolism, cancers, and myocarditis spiked dramatically, according to the Defense Military Epidemiological Database queries by the whistleblowers.

The Department of Defense responded that a glitch in the database affected the data from 2016-2020.

Testing

The Santa Cruz County Office of Education offers drive-though testing for students, staff and families at:

Cabrillo College, Aptos, Parking Lot K, Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Santa Cruz County Office of Education, 399 Encinal St., Santa Cruz, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

See: https://tinyurl.com/get-tested-santa-cruz.

Booster shots: https://myturn.ca.gov/

Vaccine providers: www.santacruzhealth. org/coronavirusvaccine.

Local information: www.santacruzhealth. org/coronavirus or (831) 454-4242 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. n •••

Total COVID cases: 2,000

••• COVID Deaths: 266 As of June 27 Age 85 and older: 115 • 75-84: 62 • 65-74: 47 60-64: 15 • 55-59: 4 • 45-54: 10 35-44: 8 • 25-34: 5 Underlying Conditions Yes: 216 • No: 50 Vaccinated Yes: 32 • No: 234 Race White 153 • Latinx 90 • Asian 16 Black 3 • Amer Indian 1 Hawaiian 1 • Another 2 Gender Men: 136 • Women: 130 Location At facility for aged: 117 Not at a facility: 148

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