By Jondi Gumz
AB 2098, declaring it is “unprofessional conduct” for a doctor to give patients “misinformation” or “disinformation” about Covid-19, risks, prevention, treatment and vaccines, has passed the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee by 9-4 vote and was sent to the Appropriations Committee for a hearing Aug. 1.
Unprofessional conduct charges can result in discipline by the Medical Board.
The California Medical Association and seven more doctor associations are in support, but more than two dozen groups are opposed, including Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids Children’s Health Defense California Chapter.
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, con-tending 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 New-som — 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 pre-existing medical conditions, but relatively few children.
The federal Centers for disease Control & Prevention reports 442 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 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.”
Data Mining
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 vac-cine manufacturers from civil personal injury lawsuits and wrongful death lawsuits result-ing 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
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, and 1,871 on June 30.
On Wednesday, the state reported 25 people hospitalized with Covid, including two in in-tensive care, in Santa Cruz County.
With 55,000+ county residents having had the infection, natural immunity may be a factor.
The county posted four deaths in the past month. All fours were over 65 with medical conditions, and vaccinated.
Santa Cruz County updates the numbers on Mondays and Thursdays.
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, Florida, Arizona and most of Oregon, all rated high risk.
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%. These subvariants have boosted cases — snaring people who have been vaccinated – not deaths.
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.
According to the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, 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, then 270 and now 299.
The 14-day positivity rate, 12.25% on January, dropped to .79%, then rose to 7.35% and dipped to 7.22%.
The Santa Cruz County Office of Education has completed 530,100 tests with Inspire Di-agnostics.
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 indi-viduals 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: 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.n
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Total COVID cases: 1,871
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COVID Deaths: 266
As of June 29
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: 149