Category: vaccines

Recently In The News: Vaccines Soon To Be Available To 5 To 11 Age Group

FeaturedRecently In The News: Vaccines Soon To Be Available To 5 To 11 Age Group

Even though many kids have been back at school for some time, vaccines still are not available for those under 12.

Recently, Pfizer and BioNTech completed a trial showing that a 10-microgram dose of their vaccine was safe and effective for children in the above age groups. They have submitted a request for emergency approval for use in children under 12. The FDA should give its approval by early November.

As soon as FDA approval begins, the White House plans to vaccinate every child between 5 and 12. It plans to make the vaccine available at thousands of doctors and pediatricians offices, pharmacies, hospitals, community health centers and clinics. There are also plans to educate parents on vaccines, all in the effort to reduce the impact of a virus that has taken lives of well over a half a million people in the United States alone. 

"If we can get the overwhelming majority of those 28 million children vaccinated, I think that would play a major role in diminishing the spread of infection in the community," Dr. Fauci said at last Wednesday's press briefing at the White House. "That's one of the reasons why we want to do as best we can to get those children 5 to 11 vaccinated."

Dr. Fauci, who is current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been implicated by delusional Trump loyalists in a conspiratorial cover up – along with mainstream media, i.e., CNN and MSNBC – of creating the coronavirus responsible for COVID, as a bioweapon through gain of function funding, that Dr. Fauci conspired with “the media” to hide the truth of the origin of the virus, and that Trump himself was nothing more than an innocent bystander who just happened to get caught up in all of the melodrama, and that there was nothing or very little that he could do.

This theory has been promoted – without evidence – by not just conservative media figures such as Tucker Carlson and others, but so-called progressives like Joe Rogan, and Krystal Ball on a recent episode of his podcast. This is a conspiracy that has been around since the lab leak theory.

Sources: The Week, Washington Post, Whitehouse.gov.

In The News This Week: Pfizer Hoping To Seek COVID Vaccine Approval For Children

FeaturedIn The News This Week: Pfizer Hoping To Seek COVID Vaccine Approval For Children

On ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla told George Stephanopoulos  that booster shots can be provided to older Americans, as well as shots for those who have yet to be vaccinated.

“I think it is also not the right thing to try to resolve it with an ‘or’ when you can resolve it with an ‘and,” he said. “It’s not shall we give boosters or give primary doses to other people. I think the answer is let’s give both boosters and doses to other people.”

CDC director Rochelle Walensky agrees with the agency’s advisory panel that medically vulnerable seniors should receive a booster shot of the vaccine, but the panel has rejected the recommendation that frontline workers receive a booster.

“We are looking forward to being able to vaccinate all these vulnerable people so that we can put an end to this pandemic,” Bourla said.

The debate over the need for a booster may seem unimportant, since some countries – poorer countries – have no vaccines at all. Former CDC director, Tom Frieden, criticized Pfizer and Moderna of not doing enough to supply vaccines to poorer nations.

“While focusing on selling expensive vaccines to rich countries, Moderna and Pfizer are doing next to nothing to close the global gap in vaccine supply. Shameful,” Frieden recently tweeted.

Recently, Pfizer released safety date regarding vaccines for children 05 to 11years of age. “I think we are going to submit this data very soon,” Bourla said. “A matter of days, not weeks.”

When the data has been reviewed and the FDA gives it’s approval, Bourla said Pfizer will begin inoculating children in that age group.

Sources: The Week, ABC News, NY Times.