Coronavirus Daily News Brief – May 7: The Return of Dr. Tenpenny, Is Disney Losing Its Magic?, Astra-Zeneca Withdraws Vaccine
Ten U.S. Lincoln head pennies from various years
Good afternoon. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on its 1,518th day.
In news we cover today, Dr. Tenpenny is back, Astra-Zeneca is withdrawing from the coronavirus vaccine market, and Disney’s earnings forecast makes analysts wonder if some of the post-lockdown magic is wearing off.
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On May 7, 2020, just as the U.S. Transportation Security Administration began to require that its security checkpoint screeners don face masks at work, Frontier Airlines said that it would soon begin to screen passenger and crew body temperatures at the start of the following month. “Anyone with a temperature exceeding 100.4 degrees will be denied boarding,” the airline said at the time.
In Washington, D.C. former Vice President Al Gore took the Trump administration to task for its practice of distributing much of the administration’s scientific knowledge on coronavirus through the coronavirus task force and the vice president’s office as well as for having blocked Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the task force, from testifying before Congress.
“We have had a tradition in this country of seeking out the best available evidence and testing it with one another in free discourse, and then deciding together in the spirit of camaraderie what is more likely to be true than not,” Gore said in an interview on CNN, adding that “[T]hat is how science works as well.”
In the United Kingdom, then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab used blunt language when asked about a possible reopening of the country, saying that the pandemic “remains deadly and infectious.”
Meanwhile, then President Trump’s valet, a member of the U.S. Navy, testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, raising questions about protections in place to keep the president safe from the virus.
Also in the United States, the pandemic situation was improving in states including Montana, New York, and Colorado, while in places such as Minnesota and Puerto Rico, cases were up 50% between over the prior week.
Russia recorded the highest number of new coronavirus cases the country has seen, confirming 11,231 new infections. Over the weekend, the country recorded 10,633 new cases in a 24-hour period. That brought the total number of confirmed cases to 177,160, giving Russia the second-fastest rate of increase of new infections in the world and making it the fifth most affected country, surpassing both Germany and France with Thursday’s figures.
Then Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said that the then current pandemic restrictions in the Russian capital would remain in effect until at least May 31, 2020. The wearing masks and gloves would be mandatory for those at work, out shopping, or on public transport, the mayor said.
By contrast, China said that the entire country was at a “low risk” for a Covid-19 outbreak.
In Brazil, then President Jair Bolsonaro and then Economy Minister Paulo Guedes advocated for relaxed quarantine measures contending that the country’s economy could otherwise collapse.
Then French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that the country would keep its borders closed until “further notice” and continues to limit travel within the country to 60 miles (100 km).
UNITED STATES
The doctor who contended that vaccinated people become magnetized is now and who had her license to practice medicine yanked by the State of Ohio last year has agreed to pay a $3,000 fine and cooperate with investigators in order to regain her right to practice medicine.
Last summer, the State Medical Board of Ohio indefinitely suspended the license of Sherri Tenpenny. Tenpenny had her 15 minutes of fame after testifying to state lawmakers in June 2021 that coronavirus vaccinations made people magnetic.
Her testimony then is the stuff that legends aren’t generally made of.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the Internet of people who have had these shots and now they’re magnetized,” Tenpenny said in the course of her testimony. “You can put a key on their forehead [and] it sticks. You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that.”
Tenpenny didn’t stop there, however. She said there may be an “interface – yet to be defined” between the components of the vaccines and “all of the 5G towers,” noting that the connection is “not proven yet” but that “we’re trying to figure [it] out.”
Disney’s theme parks may be losing some of the magic they had when pandemic restrictions were first lifted. The company’s disappointing earnings forecast for its theme parks raises questions about demand trends for a key source of profit.
A new study found that a 2021 public awareness campaign launched by the Biden Administration in 2021 succeeded in saving more than 50,000 lives.
The study, published in the Journal of Health Communications, examined the April 2021 “We Can Do This” campaign designed to increase public confidence in coronavirus vaccines. The study claims that the campaign prevented hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and millions of additional SARS-CoV-2 cases, which also saved the United States hundreds of billions of dollars in less than one year.
GLOBAL PANDEMIC NEWS
AstraZeneca said it had begun the worldwide withdrawal of its coronavirus vaccine, now called Vaxzevria, due to a “surplus of available updated vaccines” since the start of the pandemic. It also has begun to withdraw the vaccine’s marketing authorizations within Europe.
Scientists at Cambridge University have created a vaccine that has the potential to protect against a broad range of coronaviruses, including varieties that haven’t yet been discovered or don’t even exist yet.
The new vaccine is part of a shift towards what virologists term “proactive vaccinology,” whereby vaccines are designed and readied for manufacture before a major virus emerges. It works by training the body’s immune system to target proteins that are shared across many different types of coronaviruses and works by attaching harmless proteins from these different coronaviruses to minuscule nanoparticles that are then injected to prime the body’s defenses to fight an invading virus.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending April 27, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on May 3 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.0%, a figure that is unchanged from the previous 7-day period, and the trend in test positivity is -0.1% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.3%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -11%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 in the same 7-day period was 5,098, a figure that is down 11.1 % over the past 7-day period. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 0.8%, a figure that is essentially unchanged from the previous period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine at press time, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.57 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 4,188 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.7% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, 2023, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines in any significant number
Finally, as of April 14, 2024, only Turkmenistan in Central Asia is only state that has not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever, although it is strongly suspected that the virus is present there. Meanwhile, the last territory in the world to have its first ever SARS-CoV-2 infection was Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand that reported its first five cases on December 21, 2022.
Where Has All the Data Gone?
We regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated. Over the past 15 months, as more politicians and governments sought to place SARS-CoV-2 in the rear-view mirror, pandemic data reporting sputtered out and we are now at the point where it is simply not feasible to provide statistically valid case data on a global scale.
We are developing potential new and authoritative sources that we will present once they have been properly vetted, so stay tuned to this space. In the meantime, our Long Covid and pandemic coverage will remain much the same.
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Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this issue.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
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