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As new details emerge about the newly passed $900 billion coronavirus relief package, US public health officials are welcoming the added resources for delivering the vaccine and shoring up other pandemic response activities.
And in global developments, the head of BioNTech said the vaccine it developed with Pfizer likely protects against the UK SARS-CoV-2 variant, as the virus pushed its way to Antarctica for the first time.
Stimulus boost for public health response
Despite the speed of vaccine development and emergency use approval, public health officials have warned that they lack the resources to develop and staff mass immunization campaigns needed to help make the best use of the new tool for battling COVID-19. The vaccine tracker from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that, as of yesterday, about 4.6 million doses had been distributed but only about 614,000 had been administered.
Trump is reportedly turning on virtually every person around him
As Trump continues his attempts to overturn the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden,
Axios reports that he s turning bitterly on virtually every person around him and griping about anyone who refuses to indulge his efforts or baseless conspiracy theories.
Among the targets of his ire is evidently Vice President Mike Pence, who Trump has reportedly been complaining isn t fighting hard enough for him. Pence s upcoming role presiding over the Senate as the results of the 2020 election are validated, which the president would consider the ultimate betrayal, has started to loom large in Trump s mind,
POLITICO
The NIH was initially left out of receiving doses despite helping to develop Moderna vaccine.
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A cohort of the federal government’s top health officials received shots of the coronavirus vaccine on stage Tuesday alongside a half-dozen frontline health care workers.
The event was equal parts a public endorsement of the safety of the vaccines, two of which have been authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration this month, and a celebration of the National Institutes of Health’s influential role in developing the inoculation created by U.S. pharmaceutical company Moderna.
“When we need a medical miracle, we know where to look,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said. It fills me with pride that the NIH and other parts of HHS played a significant role in developing this vaccine, which will save thousands and thousands of lives and help bring this dark chapter to an end.”
Texas court case shows DACA program remains under peril
A court hearing Tuesday over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, highlights the peril the program still faces even under an incoming Democratic president who has pledged to protect it. A federal judge in Houston will hear arguments from Texas and eight other states seeking to end the program, which shields immigrants brought to the country illegally as children and provides limited protections to about 650,000 people. A New York judge in December ordered the Trump administration to restore the program as enacted by former President Barack Obama in 2012. But the Houston case directly targets DACA s original terms, as Texas and the other states argue it violated the Constitution by going around Congress authority on immigration laws. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to protect DACA. But a ruling against DACA could limit Biden s ability to keep the program or something similar.
A medical assistant injects a vaccine in a file photo. | (Photo: Reuters/Michael Buholzer)
As ethical questions raised by COVID-19 vaccines have left many Christians wondering whether they should get vaccinated, three Christian ethicists have offered answers based on some primary considerations believers may have safety and efficacy, complicity with evil, and compliance with authority.
Dealing with the issue of safety and efficacy, Matthew Arbo, C. Ben Mitchell and Andrew T. Walker write that because the stakes are so high, “the scrutiny and oversight have never been more intense.”
Writing for the Public Discourse journal of the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank in Princeton, New Jersey, the three authors quote Dan Barouch, a vaccine researcher at Harvard University: “Never before have there been vaccine trials that have been followed so closely from inception to onset to conduct.”