New York Health Officials Report Has Experts Concerned
It’s no wonder Joe’s administration hasn’t released the data surrounding booster effectiveness as first reported by the New York Times (that’s for the annoying fact-checkers).
A New York Department of Health study has found that the Pfizer vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 in kids 5 to 11 was just 12%.
From CNBC:
The New York State Department of Health found that the effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine against Covid infection plummeted from 68% to 12% for kids in that age group during the omicron surge from Dec. 13 through Jan 24. Protection against hospitalization dropped from 100% to 48% during the same period.
You can click here to read the study for yourself.
As a caveat the study is undergoing a peer review, however, their findings are concerning. There’s is a healthy debate examining if the reaction in children was due to the dosage or if children’s immune system acts differently to the vaccine.
According to the CNBC report, researchers believe that the drop in effectiveness among children 5 to 11 years old was due to the low dosage they received.
“Given rapid loss of protection against infections, these results highlight the continued importance of layered protections, including mask wearing, for children to prevent infection and transmission,” the public health officials wrote in the study.
Of course, just ahead of Joe’s big speech New York dropped the mask mandate and New York City is terminating their vaccine mandate.
COVID restrictions in strong blue areas are dropping as fast as Joe Biden’s approval rating.
Britain appears to be done with COVID altogether, not only have they removed all restrictions on the public they just terminated the policy requiring health care workers to be vaccinated. In a press release, the British government stated that since the Omicron variant symptoms are not as severe they will be terminating their policy.
Part of the reason for the requirement to be removed was the response to a nationwide poll. The Brits found that of the over 90,000 respondents of their poll 87% of them felt “strongly that the requirement should be revoked.”
From the Official Notice:
As part of the announcement, the government set out the changes in clinical evidence which made it right to revisit the balance of risks and benefits that had guided government’s original decisions to introduce COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of deployment in health and social care. At that time Delta was the dominant variant of COVID-19, compared to Omicron which is intrinsically less severe. With a population that had immune systems that had limited exposure to COVID-19, and with vaccine effectiveness against infection after 2 doses estimated at 65% to 80%, the clinical evidence weighed heavily in favour of introducing the requirement in order to protect patients and the people who receive care and support.
Our overriding concern remains their protection, as well as protecting our valuable health and social care workforce. Our population as a whole is now better protected against hospitalisation from COVID-19 thanks to our world leading vaccine programme and we will build on the existing work to support and encourage vaccine uptake it continues to be a clear professional responsibility of all health and social care staff to be vaccinated. However, combined with the reduced vaccine effectiveness against infection, it is right and responsible to revisit the vaccination as a condition of deployment policy.
Balls in your court Joe.