President Joe Biden hailed the "stunning" progress that the United States has made in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, as he addressed the nation from the White House on Tuesday.
"While we still have a long way to go in this fight, a lot of work to do in May and June to get us to July 4, we've made stunning progress because of all of you, the American people," Biden said, referencing Independence Day as a milestone goal in the fight against the virus.
"Cases and deaths are down -- down dramatically from where they were when I took office."
Biden spoke out as the country's premier health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued new guidance notifying Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus that they no longer need to wear masks outdoors.
Fully vaccinated people can eat, walk or attend small gatherings outside without a mask --as long as they are not at crowded events.
"If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing many things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic," the government body said in a statement.
Masks are still considered necessary for vaccinated people if they are at concerts, parades or large sporting events, even when outdoors, the CDC said.
More than half of all US adults have now received at least one of two vaccine doses. The surging rate of people seeking out vaccines has begun to taper, but new Covid-19 cases are also falling.
The government announced on Monday it would be sending up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine abroad, after critics had accused Washington of "hoarding" the British-developed vaccine, which is not authorized in the country and will likely not be required to vaccinate Americans.
Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus no longer need to wear masks outdoors, except at crowded events, US government health authorities said Tuesday.
Under the newly released guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, fully vaccinated people can eat, walk or attend small gatherings outside without a mask.
"If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing many things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic," the government body said in a statement.
Masks are still considered necessary for vaccinated people if they are at concerts, parades or large sporting events, even when outdoors, the CDC said.
Indoor activities remain under a masks recommendation. This includes movie theaters and even "uncrowded" indoor shopping centers and museums, the CDC said.
The CDC stressed that its newly relaxed guidance only applies to people who have had their full vaccine doses and are two weeks past the final shot.
More than half of all US adults have now received at least one of two vaccine doses. The surging rate of people seeking out vaccines has begun to taper, but new Covid-19 cases are also falling.
Dozens of congressional Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday urged top Biden officials to release unredacted copies of multi-billion-dollar coronavirus vaccine contracts that the Trump administration negotiated in secret with major pharmaceutical companies last year—and refused to divulge to lawmakers.
In a letter (pdf) to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, 50 lawmakers from the House and Senate argue that public knowledge of the specific terms of the vaccine contracts "has become all the more important as manufacturers talk of boosters and seasonal immunizations, while considering 'post-pandemic' price increases."
"Taxpayers should know how their funds were spent and what secret deals were reached." —Rep. Lloyd Doggett
"Taxpayers are serving as the angel investors in Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic development, assuming the costs and risk," the letter reads. "It is imperative that they also receive a stake in the outcome as well as complete transparency on how billions of tax dollars have been spent and what terms were agreed to and may still be renegotiated."
As NPRreported in September, the Trump administration worked to dodge the "regulatory oversight and transparency of traditional federal contracting mechanisms" by issuing massive vaccine contracts to Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and other major drugmakers "through a nongovernment intermediary."
"Instead of entering into contracts directly with vaccine makers, more than $6 billion in Operation Warp Speed funding has been routed through a defense contract management firm called Advanced Technologies International, Inc.," NPR noted. "ATI then awarded contracts to companies working on Covid-19 vaccines."
Further fueling concerns over the Trump administration's handling of the contracting process was a whistleblower complaint filed last May by Dr. Rick Bright, the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which awarded huge contracts for vaccines and therapeutics to Johnson & Johnson and other pharma giants.
Bright—who said his removal last April was retaliation for his criticism of the White House's pandemic response—alleged in the complaint that he faced pressure from higher-ups at Trump's HHS to "ignore expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism."
"We don't know the rewards or the incentives that the companies are getting, which might drive some companies to take additional risk or maybe do things inappropriately," Bright said in an October interview. "There's no reason to hide what's in those agreements at all. For the government to set these contracts up in this way and block that type of transparency leads me to think that there's something interesting in there they don't want discovered."
In their letter on Monday, the lawmakers demanded that the Biden administration disclose unredacted copies of all contracts, research and development agreements, and any other "arrangements entered into by the United States or any subcontractor, including Advanced Technologies International, Inc. (ATI), related to Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and any other medical countermeasures."
To substantiate their fears of impending price hikes on vaccines and coronavirus therapeutics, the lawmakers point to a Pfizer executive's recent comment predicting "a significant opportunity for our vaccine... from a pricing perspective" should Covid-19 become endemic—as many experts anticipate.
"Despite taxpayers fully underwriting Moderna's vaccine, significantly paying for Johnson & Johnson's research, and conducting some of the underlying research that contributed to Pfizer vaccines, all three companies are apparently planning to raise prices as quickly as possible," the lawmakers write. "In our exercise of congressional oversight, we seek access to these agreements to understand what protections are in place for taxpayer investments and what terms may need to be renegotiated."
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas.), chair of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee and leader of the new letter, said in a statement that "while pleased with vaccine advances, taxpayers who financed development deserve full disclosure of the same type of information a private investor would demand."
"In so many ways, the vaccines are our shot—our shot to contain the virus and our shot, developed and manufactured with at least $19 billion taxpayer dollars and over $2 billion more for therapeutics," said Doggett. "Taxpayers should know how their funds were spent and what secret deals were reached."
Read the full letter:
Dear Secretary Becerra and Secretary Austin, The Trump administration remained nonresponsive to congressional requests to review the unredacted contracts negotiated for Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics. When limited contract information has been belatedly released, key provisions concerning pricing terms, required deliverables and timelines, termination clauses, and patent right information has been redacted. We write to request that you release unredacted copies of all agreements regarding all of these and any other medical countermeasures entered into by the United States, or its subcontractors. Taxpayers are serving as the angel investors in Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic development, assuming the costs and risk. It is imperative that they also receive a stake in the outcome as well as complete transparency on how billions of tax dollars have been spent and what terms were agreed to and may still be renegotiated. This information has become all the more important as manufacturers talk of boosters and seasonal immunizations, while considering "post-pandemic" price increases. On March 11th, Pfizer Chief Financial Officer Frank D'Amelio noted at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference that Pfizer sees "a significant opportunity…from a pricing perspective" to increase prices should COVID-19 become endemic, as many scientists predict. Similarly, Moderna President Stephen Hoge told the same conference "Post-pandemic, as we get into those what I will call seasonal epidemics that you would expect to happen with a SARS-CoV-2 virus, we would expect more normal pricing based on value." Johnson & Johnson Executive Vice President Joseph Wolk told the Raymond James Institutional Investors Conference they expect "pricing that's much more in line with a commercial opportunity." Despite taxpayers fully underwriting Moderna's vaccine, significantly paying for Johnson & Johnson's research, and conducting some of the underlying research that contributed to Pfizer vaccines, all three companies are apparently planning to raise prices as quickly as possible. In our exercise of congressional oversight, we seek access to these agreements to understand what protections are in place for taxpayer investments and what terms may need to be renegotiated. During a September 16th press briefing, retired Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, former Director of Supply, Production, and Distribution for Operation Warp Speed, asserted these secret contracts "entail information that allows us to all know that we paid a fair and reasonable price for each one of these vaccines as we went forward." To assure this commitment is being met, we respectfully request that you provide the following information:
Unredacted copies of all contracts, cooperative research and development agreements, grants, funding agreements, procurement agreements, manufacturing agreements, licensing arrangements, other transactions, and any other arrangements entered into by the United States or any subcontractor, including Advanced Technologies International, Inc. (ATI), related to Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and any other medical countermeasures.
Patents and patent applications for a Covid-19 vaccine, therapeutic, or other medical countermeasure with U.S. government coinventors, or on which there is disclosure of U.S. government interest. Please include the numbers and expiration dates of such patents and the numbers and filing dates of such patent applications.
Any guidance, memos, email communications, written communications, transcripts, or other documentation regarding how federal investments shall be taken into consideration in making pricing determinations in funding and procurement agreements.
The estimated cost to produce a dose of each Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic candidate receiving federal research, development, or manufacturing support, and itemized breakdowns of the amounts of funding each manufacturer has asserted they have invested in the research, development, and manufacturing. Please include any steps you have taken, or plan to take, to verify the amounts each company has asserted they invested.
Any compensation, including royalty fees, each Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic candidate is receiving from the U.S. government for the licensing and production of their product.
Any compensation subcontractors of the United States, including ATI, are receiving for administrative and management work related to Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic development, manufacturing, and distribution. Please include any bonuses or other compensation any subcontractors may receive upon FDA emergency use authorization or approval of a Covid-19 vaccine, therapeutic, or other medical countermeasure as well as any royalty or licensing fees, or other monetary or non-monetary stake in any of these products.
In the event that you believe that any contractual provision restricts your ability to publicly disclose any of the information requested, please identify the specific applicable language. Further, for any information that you may contend is not subject to public disclosure, please provide it under appropriate seal for our Congressional oversight review. We appreciate your immediate attention to these important questions to provide full transparency on how taxpayer dollars have been spent.
American consumers this month were feeling significantly more confident and have a much more favorable view of the economy than in March, according to a survey released on Tuesday.
The Conference Board reported its Consumer Confidence Index hit 121.7 in April, from 109.0 in February, a larger-than-expected monthly jump and its highest level since before the pandemic began in February 2020.
And the Present Situations Index jumped nearly 30 points to 139.6.
The rise came as the US economy is expected to recover this year with the help of Covid-19 vaccines and government stimulus measures, after the pandemic caused a historic downturn in 2020.
"Consumers' assessment of current conditions improved significantly in April, suggesting the economic recovery strengthened further" in the early part of the second quarter, said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board's senior director of economic indicators.
Signs of optimism were seen throughout the report, with 37.9 percent of respondents saying jobs are "plentiful," up more than 11 percentage points, while those saying jobs are "hard to get" fell more than five points to 13.2 percent.
The share of respondents claiming business conditions were "bad" fell to 24.8 percent from 30.1 percent in March, while those characterizing conditions as "good" rose five points to 23.3 percent.
"The receipt of the latest round of stimulus payments, coupled with the improving Covid picture as vaccinations rise, has made people feel much better about the economy and their household finances today," Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said.
However, Shepherdson noted consumers' expectations for the months ahead saw little improvement, with the percentage of consumers expecting better conditions over the next six months increasingly only slightly and those expecting them to worsen unchanged after falling for several months.
Consumers' inflations expectations for the next year remained elevated but unchanged from March despite fears from some economists that the massive government stimulus measures rolled out to blunt the downturn would cause prices to rise.
Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on Covid-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution—
despite a growing international call to do exactly that—is a bad idea.
Directly asked during an interview with
Sky News if he thought it "would be helpful" to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered: "No."
Asked to explain why not, Gates—whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft
relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth—said that: "Well, there's only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done—moving a vaccine, say, from a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India—it's novel—it's only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all."
The reference is to the Serum factory in India, the largest such institute in the country, which has contracts with AstraZeneca to manufacture their Covid-19 vaccine, known internationally as Covishield.
The thing that's holding "things back" in terms of the global vaccine rollout, continued Gates, "is not intellectual property. It's not like there's some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you've got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process needs to be looked at in a very careful way."
Critical advocates for robust and immediate change to intellectual property protections at the World Trade Organization when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccines, however, issued scathing indictments of Gates' defense of the status quo.
Nick Dearden, executive director of Global Justice Now, one of the lead partner groups in an international coalition calling for WTO patent waivers at a crucial meeting of the world body next month, characterized Gates' remarks—and the ideological framework behind them—as "disgusting."
"Who appointed this billionaire head of global health?"
asked Dearden. "Oh yeah, he did."
Journalist Stephen Buryani, who on Saturday
wrote an in-depth Guardian column on the urgent need for the patent waivers and technology sharing, offered a similarly negative view of the billionaire's "awful" arguments against sharing the vaccine technology.
Gates, charged Buryani, "acts like an optimist but has a truly dismal vision of the world."
During the
Sky News interview, Gates said it was "not completely surprising" that the richest nations like U.S., U.K., and others in Europe vaccinated their populations first. He said that made sense because the pandemic was worse in those countries, but said he believed that "within three or four months the vaccine allocation will be getting to all the countries that have the very severe epidemic."
Watch the full interview:
Offering his interpretation of what Gates was actually throughout the interview, Buryani paraphrased it this way: "We can't make more vaccines, we can't compromise profits, we can't trust poor countries with our technology, and they'll get their scraps after we eat."
"The poverty of vision from [Gates] and other 'leaders' has been astounding," added Buryani. "Smallpox, Polio, both had joined-up responses that shared knowledge and technology across the world. We're happy to let the *pharma* market sort out the biggest crisis of our lifetimes. Totally on autopilot."
While public health experts agree that developing nations may not have the current know-how or capacity to produce advanced vaccines at scale, they argue that is also the result of policy choices that governments and others have made. Earlier this month 66 organizations
called on the U.S. to initiate a global vaccine manufacturing program that, in tandem with patent waivers and recipe sharing, would pave the way for ramped up capacity.
"The U.S. government has helped produce hundreds of millions of vaccine doses for people living in the U.S., on a relatively short timeline. The same is needed—and within reach—for all countries," said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines program, at the time. "The key missing ingredient is ambitious political leadership, to end the pandemic for everyone, everywhere."
Meanwhile, in a detailed online social media thread earlier this month, journalist and activist Cory Doctor stated that while numerous "people helped create our 'Vaccine Apartheid,' the single individual who did the most to get us here is Bill Gates, through his highly ideological 'philanthropic' foundation, which exists to push his pitiless doctrine of unfettered monopoly."
Doctorow also pointed people to a feature in The New Republic by Alexander Zaitchik earlier this month which details Gates has long used his "hallowed foundation" and position as the "world's de facto public health czar" to defend the intellectual property regime that is now central to the fight between those defending "Vaccine Apartheid" on the one hand and international campaigners fighting for a "People's Vaccine" that would unleash the life-saving inoculations from their corporate masters in the pharmaceutical industry.
According to Zaitchik:
In April [of 2020], Bill Gates launched a bold bid to manage the world's scientific response to the pandemic. Gates's Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator expressed a status quo vision for organizing the research, development, manufacture, and distribution of treatments and vaccines. Like other Gates-funded institutions in the public health arena, the Accelerator was a public-private partnership based on charity and industry enticements. Crucially, and in contrast to the C-TAP, the Accelerator enshrined Gates's long-standing commitment to respecting exclusive intellectual property claims. Its implicit arguments—that intellectual property rights won't present problems for meeting global demand or ensuring equitable access, and that they must be protected, even during a pandemic—carried the enormous weight of Gates's reputation as a wise, beneficent, and prophetic leader. How he's developed and wielded this influence over two decades is one of the more consequential and underappreciated shapers of the failed global response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Entering year two, this response has been defined by a zero-sum vaccination battle that has left much of the world on the losing side.
Quoted in the piece is James Love, founder and director of Knowledge Ecology International, which studies public policy and intellectual property as it intersects with public health and the drug industry. Love explains just how powerful the influence of Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been in curtailing the conversation around I.P. and vaccines.
"If you said to an ordinary person, 'We're in a pandemic. Let's figure out everyone who can make vaccines and give them everything they need to get online as fast as possible,' it would be a no-brainer," Love told TNR. "But Gates won't go there. Neither will the people dependent on his funding. He has immense power. He can get you fired from a U.N. job. He knows that if you want to work in global public health, you'd better not make an enemy of the Gates Foundation by questioning its positions on I.P. and monopolies. And there are a lot of advantages to being on his team. It's a sweet, comfortable ride for a lot of people."
Back at the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020, said Love, "Things could have gone either way, but Gates wanted exclusive rights maintained." That, argues, was crucial in terms of what has happened since.
As Doctorow also suggests in his exploration of the issue, the fix was in from the beginning in terms of intellectual property and the Covid-19 pandemic and nobody should take seriously Gates' argument that there's simply not enough time to make lifting patent protections a priority at this point.
"Having sabotaged the efforts by poor countries to engage in the kind of production ramp-up the rich world saw as vaccines were being developed, it may NOW be too late," tweeted Doctorow. "Because of my bad ideas THEN, it's too late NOW."
Fox News host Tucker Carlson's call to publicly harass people who wear masks during the novel coronavirus pandemic shocked CNN host John Berman, who questioned whether Carlson even wanted his viewers to live.
The CNN host played a clip of Carlson's show from Monday night in which he encouraged viewers to go on the offensive against mask wearers in their communities to "restore the society we were born in."
"The next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate, ask politely but firmly, would you please take off your mask?" Carlson said. "Science shows there's no reason for you to be wearing it. your mask is making me uncomfortable."
Berman pointed out that the reason many people are still wearing masks is that just over a quarter of the country has so far been fully vaccinated, which means that hundreds of millions of people are still potentially vulnerable to infection if everyone walks around without their masks.
Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V - A health worker opens a package containing several doses of the Coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V. Brazil's National Health Regulation Agency (Anvisa) has declared itself against the import of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V. - Jesus Vargas/dpa
Brazil's National Health Regulation Agency (Anvisa) has declared itself against the import of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V.
The agency lacks "consistent and reliable data," it said in a statement late on Monday evening. The decision was unanimous after about five hours of deliberations.
However, Anvisa director Alex Machado Campos stressed that the decision was only a "snapshot."
Shortcomings were identified in both the development and the production of the vector vaccine, according to the statement, based on the data that could be analysed so far. This includes all three phases of the clinical trials of the preparation, it said.
"In addition, there is insufficient or no data on quality control, safety and efficacy," the agency wrote.
So far, 14 states in Latin America's largest country have asked for permission to import Sputnik V in view of the dramatic coronavirus situation.
Brazil, with its approximately 210 million inhabitants, is one of the hotspots of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Ministry of Health, more than 14 million people have been infected with the coronavirus and about 390,000 patients have died in connection with Covid-19.
At the beginning of March, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) started reviewing Sputnik V as part of a so-called rolling review. In this process, test results are examined even if not all data are available and no marketing authorization application has been submitted yet.
According to information from Moscow, Sputnik V is already registered in 60 countries. Germany is also in talks with Russia regarding possible deliveries of the vaccine.
Most recently, India gave Sputnik V emergency approval after overtaking Brazil in absolute infection numbers to become the most affected country in the world after the United States.
On Monday, Fox News' Tucker Carlson took anti-mask rhetoric to a new extreme, suggesting not only that people wearing masks in public actively be shunned, but that kids wearing masks outdoors should be taken from their parents by police and child services.
"Your response when you see children wearing masks when they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beating a kid at Walmart. Call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services ... What you're looking at is abuse, it's child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it."
Carlson's remarks triggered a wave of outrage from commenters on social media.
This is really, really dangerous. Listen to his tone of voice, and what he’s instructing. He’s moving from his view… https://t.co/Tv0CB36cy7
Misinformation about coronavirus vaccines continues to impact public policy -- even at schools.
"A private school in the fashionable Design District of Miami sent its faculty and staff a letter last week about getting vaccinated against Covid-19. But unlike institutions that have encouraged and even facilitated vaccination for teachers, the school, Centner Academy, did the opposite: One of its co-founders, Leila Centner, informed employees 'with a very heavy heart' that if they chose to get a shot, they would have to stay away from students," The New York Timesreported Monday.
"In an example of how misinformation threatens the nation's effort to vaccinate enough Americans to get the coronavirus under control, Ms. Centner, who has frequently shared anti-vaccine posts on Facebook, claimed in the letter that 'reports have surfaced recently of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated. Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person,' she wrote, repeating a false claim that vaccinated people can somehow pass the vaccine to others and thereby affect their reproductive systems. (They can do neither.)" the newspaper fact-checked.
Teachers may lose their jobs if they get vaccinated.
"Teachers who get the vaccine over the summer will not be allowed to return, the letter said, until clinical trials on the vaccine are completed, and then only 'if a position is still available at that time' — effectively making teachers' employment contingent on avoiding the vaccine," The Times explained.
Antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke to students at the school days before being suspended from Instagram for pushing vaccine misinformation.
The owners of this school also produced an anti-vaccine film aimed at BIPOC and hosted RFK Jr for a talk with teach… https://t.co/MYuBYohrof
A controversial Wisconsin priest who made headlines last fall by calling Democrats "godless" is now telling his parishioners not to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.
The La Crosse Tribune reports that Father James Altman is telling members of his church that they should rely on God to save them from the novel coronavirus and should not trust any vaccine.
A flyer posted on Altman's church's website claims that it is "diabolical for anyone to virtue-signal/shame/compel you to take such an experimental drug, making you nothing other than a guinea pig," while also stating that "God is still the best doctor and prayer is still the best medicine."
Additionally, a church bulletin describes the COVID-19 vaccines as "an experimental use of a genetic altering substance that modifies your body — your temple of the Holy Spirit."
Additionally, video obtained by the La Cross Tribune shows that Altman's church is hosting packed services in which no parishioners are wearing masks.
Altman's latest antics are so extreme that the Diocese of La Crosse tells the LaCrosse Tribune that it is trying to "privately address" his behavior.
"It is a matter of concern for Bishop Callahan when Fr. James Altman, or any of his priests, address medical, political or worldly challenges in a manner that misleads or overtly condemns others," the Diocese said.
A study cited by COVID-19 truthers claiming that masks are harmful to humans' health is reportedly about to get retracted.
According to Retraction Watch, a study written by physiologist Baruch Vainshelboim that claimed wearing masks led to adverse health outcomes is being retracted by Elsevier, which published it last year.
The study made a series of sweeping claims about the negative effects of wearing masks, including "hypoxia, hypercapnia, shortness of breath, increased acidity and toxicity, activation of fear and stress response, rise in stress hormones, immunosuppression, fatigue, headaches, decline in cognitive performance, predisposition for viral and infectious illnesses, chronic stress, anxiety and depression."
The study has been cited by right-wing publications such as Gateway Pundit as proof that masks are dangerous, even though scientists have widely debunked it for making several false claims.
J. Alex Huffman, an aerosol scientist at the University of Denver, told FactCheck.org that Vainshelboim's paper made fundamental errors in describing the ways that viruses spread through the air.
"Viruses don't come out of your mouth as naked viruses," he explained to the website. "They come out in liquid drops that are full of mostly water but also some proteins and salts."
Additionally, as Snopes notes, the study was not peer reviewed before publication, as Elsevier's Medical Hypotheses journal specializes in publishing "radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas" so long as "they are coherently expressed."
But despite its willingness to publish outside-the-box ideas without traditional peer review, it seems that the anti-mask study was nonetheless a bridge too far for the publication.
According to a report from The Daily Beast, a Michigan self-described "senior industrial hygienist" who is passing herself off as an "exposure scientist" is getting audiences with influential Republican lawmakers. Her claims have some scientists and health officials alarmed.
Kristen Meghan Kelly, 38, has laid claim to being a "health freedom advocate" after a video of her arguing against masks during the COVID-19 health crisis went viral. According to Kelly, "I actually travel around the country testifying in front of governors. I've opened up Texas and North Dakota."
In an interview with the Beast, she admitted she wants to "further loosen COVID-19 restrictions in her own state of Michigan," with the report helpfully adding the state is one of the hardest hit in the country.
"Kelly has enjoyed an increasingly robust platform in anti-mask circles in recent weeks. And this activism, public health officials fear, could cause big problems—especially in Michigan, which has become the country's worst COVID hotspot," the Beast's Larrison Campbell wrote.
Scientists and authorities in the field of industrial hygiene claim the Michigan mom is inflating her expertise and providing dangerous advice.
Laurence Svirchev, a certified industrial hygienist with the American Industrial Hygiene Association, explained: "Face coverings are a proper public health measure that mitigates the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. And if you're not wearing anything across your nose and mouth, you're only contributing to the generation of particles that are floating around in a room," before adding, "It's not a difficult concept to understand."
According to the report, the job of industrial hygienists is to oversee that OSAHA standards are followed and Kelly is going far afield outside her area of expertise.
Kelly is not a certified industrial hygienist, which she told The Daily Beast was "a personal choice." Instead, Kelly, who holds bachelor's and master's degrees in occupational safety and health, describes herself as a "senior industrial hygienist."
The Beast report notes, "Kelly has capitalized on that relative obscurity and sudden relevance—as well as COVID's evolving science—to carve out a niche for herself as an expert for anti-maskers hungry for arguments that back up their desire to ignore mask mandates."
Nonetheless, she continues to get more exposure and, with that, dismay over her claims have increased.
"Any concerns that Kelly may be mistaken about the science do not appear to have made their way to North Dakota, where she testified this month in support of a bill that would ban mask mandates statewide. The bill's sponsor told The Daily Beast that Kelly's participation was 'crucial' to the bill's eventual passage. Although Republican Gov. Doug Burgum vetoed the bill last week, the legislature voted to override his veto," the report adds.
A C-SPAN caller explained on Monday that she is refusing the COVID-19 vaccine because she has "the best doctor in the world and his name is Jesus Christ."
During C-SPAN's Washington Journal program, Sylvia called in from Durham, North Carolina to complain about the cost of vaccinations.
"I have a question," she began. "I thought they said when you took the virus vaccine that you didn't have to pay for it. So now they're coming up and saying that they want the state and local governments to take taxes out for it -- to pay for it."
"I didn't take the shot," Sylvia revealed. "I'm not going to take the shot and I'm not paying for it. Anybody who wants to be stupid enough to pay for it, they can pay for it. But I'm not."
C-SPAN host Steve Scully asked the caller why she was refusing the vaccine.
"I don't trust Fauci, and I sure as hell don't trust Joe Biden and Kamala Harris," Sylvia replied. "So I've got the best doctor in the world and his name is Jesus Christ. So if I get it without being using common sense then I'll get it. But I'm not paying for it."
Sylvia went on to claim that the COVID-19 death toll has been falsely inflated.
"A lot of these people losing their lives have died because of natural causes or heart attacks or something," she said. "And they putting it down so I will talk to the governor of North Carolina [Roy Cooper] and I'm going to want an explanation wrote down of what I have to pay taxes on because I'm not paying for this."
