Sucks big time—millions of vaccines may go wasted. Hospitals, state health depts & US govt are racing to figure out millions of Johnson & Johnson’s #Covid19 vaccine doses that are **set to expire this month in June**. Very difficult to export them too. 🧵 wsj.com/articles/milli…
2) The prospect of so many doses going to waste in the U.S. when developing nations are desperate for shots would add pressure to share stockpiled vaccines. But there are few practical solutions to administering them quickly in U.S. or distributing in time to foreign countries.
3) The stockpile is, in part, an unintended consequence of the U.S.’s decision in April to temporarily suspend administration of J&J doses to assess a rare blood-clot risk. The pause forced states and providers to cancel large blocks of appointments that were never rescheduled.
4) Good news— US is shipping the excess J&J vaccines around the world. 1 million destined for South Korea 🇰🇷
Insanity—Anti-vaccine advocates attempts to prove false claim that #COVID19 vaccines cause magnetism at Ohio legislative committee… by using a *brass* key. Brass = not magnetic by the way. Hence it didn’t go so well. 🤦🏻♂️
2) it gets worse. Anti-vaccine *expert* witness claims vaccine causes forks and keys to stick to your forehead and supposedly linked to 5G network towers…. 🤷🏻♂️
HUGE!!! The Biden administration to buy 500 million doses of Pfizer #COVID19 vaccine to donate to the world, as US dramatically increases its efforts to help vaccinate the globe. Biden is slated to announce the plan at the Group of Seven meeting this week. washingtonpost.com/politics/biden…
2) The Biden administration previously announced it would share at least 80 million vaccine doses with the world by the end of June.
3) Last week, the White House detailed plans for how it would allocate 25 million doses, with about 19 million of them being shared with Covax to distribute doses around the globe. Roughly 6 million shots would be shared directly with countries experiencing severe outbreaks.
📍Wasted $750 million on #COVID19 plexiglass instead of air quality. ➡️ “We spent a lot of time & money focused on hygiene theater. Danger is we didn’t address the real threat—airborne transmission—real $, time & attention.” @j_g_allen. #COVIDisAirborne bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
2) Not a single study has shown that the clear plastic barriers actually control the virus, said Joseph Allen of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
3) For the first months of Covid-19, top health authorities pointed to larger droplets as the key transmission culprits, despite a chorus of protests from researchers. Tinier floating droplets can also spread the virus, they warned, meaning plastic shields can’t stop them.
Mark your calendar for September! The #COVID19 vaccines may be available in the fall for U.S. children as young as 6 months. Pfizer and Moderna are testing their vaccines in children <12 years—results expected in hand for children aged 5-11 by September.🤞🏼 nytimes.com/2021/06/08/hea…
2) But nearly four million children in the United States have tested positive for the virus since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
3) Doctors continue to see rare cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, a condition linked to Covid-19 that can affect multiple organs.
Vaccinating children should further contribute to containment of the virus by decreasing its spread in communities.
📍Facebook allowed misinformation on masks & #COVID19 to go unchecked via automated software.
The % of posts linking to DANMASK-19 that claimed that masks harmed the wearer was 2.3 times higher in Facebook groups that were most affected by automation.🧵 jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…
2) “conspiratorial claims (prevalence ratio, 2.5; 95% CI, 1.5-4.5) were also higher in Facebook groups that were most affected by automation”
3) “In contrast, among posts made to groups least affected by automation, 8.5% (95% CI, 1.7%-15.2%) claimed masks harmed the wearer, 20.3% (95% CI, 10.2%-30.5%) made conspiratorial claims about the trial, and 72.9% (95% CI, 59.3%-81.4%) made neither claim.”