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The Biden administration estimates that 97% of Americans ages 16 and over have some level of COVID-19 immunity through vaccination, previous infection or both. The number may sound promising – so why do people need another round of shots? Because that protection can fade in a matter of months, leaving individuals vulnerable to COVID-19 once again. “Immunity is stronger today than at any other point in the outbreak,” Mandy Cohen, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a recent video statement. “That means we're moving towards COVID-19 being a more manageable illness with less severe...

Health officials in California recently spoke about the possible return of mask mandates in the state amid a slight uptick in COVID-19 cases. On Thursday, officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health held a press conference to speak about a rise in new COVID-19 cases, saying that over the past week cases have doubled. During the press conference, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer was asked about the potential return to mask mandates and if the county would ever make them mandatory again. "'Ever' is not a word I'm comfortable with. There's...

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo harshly criticized COVID-19 mask mandates and lockdowns, and urged people to consider "refusing to participate." "What do you call re-imposing mask policies that have been proven ineffective or restarting lockdowns that are known to cause harm? You don't call it sanity," Dr. Ladapo posted last week on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "These terrible policies only work with your cooperation. How about refusing to participate…" Some schools and companies are implementing mask mandates amid a rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations, even though some peer-reviewed research has suggested that face coverings may cause...

COVID-19 isn’t quite done with the world yet. Small surges of cases in the U.S., as well as upticks in COVID-19 hospitalizations over the summer, and new variants that weren’t around even three months ago, remind us that SARS-CoV-2 is still a health threat for the coming fall and winter. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to make a decision about which strain to target in the updated vaccine, which the agency says will be available in mid-to-late September. The FDA will be considering recommendations by the panel of independent vaccine experts it convened in June, which...

Federal health authorities are laying out plans for taking on this year’s respiratory viral season, with officials emboldened by the new spate of preventive medications the U.S. has gathered heading into the fall and winter. “We are in our strongest position yet to be able to fight COVID-19 as well as the other viruses that are responsible for the majority of fall and winter hospitalizations, namely flu, COVID as well as RSV,” a CDC official said in a press call on Thursday. They cited the high rate of COVID-19 immunity — 97 percent — among U.S. individuals 16 and older...

A second American tested positive for the new highly-mutated BA.2.86 Covid variant that has been causing global alarm over its rapid transmission.A second American tested positive for the new highly-mutated BA.2.86 Covid variant that has been causing global alarm over its rapid transmission. The positive case was detected in an asymptomatic patient in Virginia who was tested August 10 after returning to the US from Japan. Scientists identified the case in a database that contains test samples from a small number of travelers entering the US. Independent experts told DailyMail.com they believe the new strain is spreading more widely and...

An Atlanta college announced this week that it is reinstating its mask mandate for everyone on campus. Morris Brown College began classes just last week, but will require all students and employees to wear face masks. Officials say there have been no confirmed COVID-19 cases among its students, but they have received reports from other schools in the Atlanta University Center. The mask mandate is a precautionary move for the next 14 days. Morris Brown College will also not allow any parties or large student gatherings on campus during this time. Other precautionary measures include: temperature checks upon campus arrival,...

As a new Covid variant emerges, pandemic-era guidelines including social distancing and mask mandates are popping back up in some places Morris Brown College is a private liberal arts school in Atlanta, Georgia where both students and employees are now being required to wear masks in crowded areas such as hallways and classrooms for at least two weeks. Reports of positive cases among the student body have driven concerns that the new variant is going to cause a renewed boom in Covid cases not just within the college but around the country. This also means that there will be no...

The Health and Human Services Department and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority on Tuesday announced a $1.5 billion initiative through Project NextGen for its partners to develop the "next generation" of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Several new COVID-19 variants have emerged and HHS officials said the department is closely monitoring the situation as the vaccines are developed.

Covid cases are on the rise again. Hospitalizations have spiked noticeably since the beginning of July. But doctors say we're far from a place of panic. There's also promising new protection on the horizon as a highly contagious new variant spreads. As North Texas prepares for the return to school and enjoys the last bit of summer, the CDC is keeping a close watch on those COVID cases. In the first hospitalization spike, we’ve seen this year, just over 8,000 hospital admissions were reported on July 22. That was up 12% compared to the prior week.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is still planning on recommending people receive a COVID-19 shot on an annual basis, the agency’s director says. “We are likely to see this as a recommendation for an annual COVID shot, just like we have an annual flu shot,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, the director, said in a podcast episode released on Aug. 9. “And I think that will give more folks clarity about should they get one or not, because the answer is like, ‘Well, did you get one this year? If not, go get the new COVID shot.'” She...

A Chinese state-run newspaper issued a warning to Tesla CEO Elon Musk after he shared reporting on the U.S. Department of Energy’s “low confidence” assessment that the global Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory. CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported Tuesday morning on the warning from the social media pages of the Global Times, the English-language subsidiary of the CCP-controlled People’s Daily. The Global Times warned Musk that he could be “breaking the pot of China” after the Tesla and Twitter CEO responded to tweets that asserted that the Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan research laboratory. The saying is akin...

Brief Summary: The CDC and WHO have deemed the COVID-19 virus a global pandemic of unprecedented severity in modern times. In 2019, this novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged from the Asian continent and has now caused upwards of 1million deaths and over 6 million infections globally. Currently, the estimated global economic impact is over 5 Trillion dollars. Understanding the host response to pathogens, specifically the cellular and humoral responses, has played an important role in new non-antibiotic therapies. Bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto-Bismol) has a potential role in the clearance and/or recurrence of enteric viral infections.

Global concerns such as epidemics, wars and disasters weigh upon the minds of people around the world during every decade. But can a dominant global problem such as the COVID-19 pandemic cause people to neglect other urgent societal problems? A new study concludes that answer is yes. Oleg Smirnov, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University and lead author, says that the data from their research illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the discussion on climate change on Twitter. He and co-author Pei-Hsun Hsieh, a Ph.D. student in Political Science, adopted Weber's psychological theory...

A former vice president for the EcoHealth Alliance, a major funder of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, claims that his organization "developed" SARS-CoV-2 through gain-of-function research that makes viruses more dangerous. "The process of developing SARS-CoV-2 was also described in detail in the proposal submitted to, and ultimately funded by, the National Institutes of Health (HHS NIH), The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), by EcoHealth Alliance with the WIV and [University of North Carolina] listed as collaborators," according to the sworn declaration of Andrew Huff, who is represented by the attorney Thomas Renz. The statement is included...

Most people infected by the omicron variant of COVID-19 were not aware they had it, according to a new study. “More than one in every two people who were infected with omicron didn’t know they had it,” the study’s first author and an investigator at Cedars-Sinai Sandy Y. Joung said in a media release. “Awareness will be key for allowing us to move beyond this pandemic.” Investigators conducting a study examining COVID-19 and the effect of vaccines identified nearly 2,500 blood samples from patients just before and after the start of omicron’s surge – identifying 210 people who likely had...

Today Dr. Bob welcomes Dr. Li-Meng Yan, the brave scientist who risked her life when she escaped from Hong Kong with evidence that Covid was produced in a military-controlled, bioweapon laboratory in Wuhan.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used COVID-19 for biological warfare, according to a new report by nine experts with the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Generals, medical experts, and foreign policy experts including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin contributed to the report, which is available in book form on Amazon. The report, titled “The CCP is at War with America,” stated that there is no evidence COVID-19 was a natural virus, arguing that there is significant evidence it came from a CCP lab. It also stated...

Fauci appeared on MSNBC on Tuesday to recommend viewers continue to mask up indoors and get their second booster shot to combat the spread of the BA.5 variant, though he admitted it would be a "hard sell" for the American people.

Los Angeles County reached a “high” level of COVID-19 infections on Thursday, according to public health officials, meaning a mask mandate could be imposed in two weeks as the highly transmissible Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 make waves across the country. The health department bases its decision on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s three-tier criteria of community high, medium or low levels of COVID-19 rates. L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer expressed concern to reporters Thursday about the new infections, saying “we have a ton of transmission right now,” and stressed her position on masking up.