COVID-19 rates a worry as 1 million head for Iowa State Fair

 With coronavirus cases rising throughout Iowa and around the nation, health experts are becoming increasingly worried about next month’s Iowa State Fair, which will bring more than 1 million people to Des Moines from around the state, including many from counties with low vaccination rates and increasing prevalence of the disease.

Iowa’s biggest annual event comes at a time when giant summer events will draw crowds throughout the nation, including in states that are experiencing more virus infections due to low vaccination rates and growth of the delta variant. They range from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota to the Minnesota State Fair, which typically draws more than 2 million people.

In Iowa, officials have encouraged people to get vaccinated, but the state's Republican-majority legislature and governor have blocked local governments from imposing vaccination or mask requirements, so there will be no limits on who can attend the fair when the event begins its 11-day run on Aug. 12.

“Unfortunately our current leadership has turned their back on science and turned their back on what’s available to us to fight this pandemic and leaving Iowans struggling against what could be prevented,” said Dr. Megan Srinivas, an Iowa-based infectious disease physician nationally recognized for her research, which includes COVID-19.

She said people have the misconception that being outdoors ensures safety, when the virus actually can spread in large dense crowds such as state fairs and large concert venues.

“Anytime we see a large congregation of people especially with the mixed vaccination status, we’re going to see high risk for transmission and increases in transmission,” she said.

In addition, the delta variant is two to three times more transmissible than prior virus strains, creating an additional risk among fairgoers as they stand in line for food, share condiment dispensers and hop into carnival rides, Srinivas said.

The Iowa State Fair will be in Polk County, where health department spokeswoman Nola Aigner Davis expressed concern about the state’s virus trends and a reluctance to get vaccinated or wear masks.

“We know what the numbers say. We know that our cases are going up. We know trends are going up. What is the safe thing to do when people can’t get vaccinated? They need to wear a mask,” Davis said.

Asked Wednesday if she was concerned about infections at the Iowa State Fair, Gov. Kim Reynolds didn't directly answer but advised potential fairgoers to get vaccinated and noted most people hospitalized with COVID-19 have not been vaccinated.

“So it’s a decision that they’ve made,” she said. “They’ve made the calculation on whether to do it or not and so I don’t feel that we should punish everybody because some have made the decision not to.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday that 49% of Iowans were fully vaccinated, ranking the state 21st in the nation. In at least 18 of Iowa's 99 counties, fewer than 40% of the population is vaccinated, and CDC data shows 35 counties with a high rate of spread and 12 counties with substantial spread of the virus.

Iowa also has the sixth-lowest testing rates in the nation among states reporting the data, which could make it difficult to pinpoint an outbreak if one occurs.

Srinivas said she's also concerned by RAGBRAI, an annual week-long bike ride across Iowa that continues through Saturday, drawing about 15,000 cyclists from around the country to small towns in counties with some of the state's lowest vaccination rates.

She called it the “perfect environment for outbreaks to occur.”

In South Dakota, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is expected to attract over 700,000 people. The event went forward last year amid the pandemic, leading to 463 infections traced among rallygoers. Many health experts labeled the event “a superspreader.” Cell phone data shows that, for two weeks in August, the rally turns the normally-sleepy city of Sturgis into a travel hub comparable to a major U.S. city. The event is scheduled this year for Aug. 6-15.

“It’s sort of the perfect storm for pandemic spread,” said Dr. Doug Lehmann, a doctor who runs a health clinic in Rapid City.

While South Dakota this summer has seen significantly lower case rates compared to last year, local doctors are still worried the massive crowds could lead to a fresh surge.

“This year, there’s a lot of forces that are coming together to make it potentially worse (than last year),” said Dr. Jim Buchanan, a retired physician.

Only about 37% of people in Meade County -- where the rally will be held -- have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Chicago, the city’s top public health officials said Tuesday that she’s still comfortable with the four-day Lollapalooza music festival set to begin Thursday. Organizers are requiring attendees to show proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test result, Dr. Allison Arwady said Tuesday. People attending all four days will have to be tested at least twice.

The festival — the city’s largest music event — is expected to draw 100,000 people each day to Chicago’s Grant Park. Those who are not fully vaccinated must wear face masks when they are attending the festival.

The Minnesota State Fair will be back starting Aug. 26 after a one-year hiatus due to the pandemic. It typically draws more than 2 million visitors during its 12-day run, which ends on Labor Day.

Nearly all of Minnesota’s pandemic restrictions have been lifted, so fair officials don’t anticipate daily attendance limits. As things currently stand, masks will not be required for guests but are “strongly encouraged” for anyone not fully vaccinated. Proof of vaccination will not be required. Hand sanitizer will be provided at locations throughout the 322-acre fairgrounds in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights.

Garth Brooks fans will have a chance to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when the country music star performs at Arrowhead Stadium on Aug. 7. Chiefs president Mark Donovan said Monday the team plans to take every opportunity to offer vaccinations at Arrowhead, The Kansas City Star reported.

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/covid-19-rates-worry-million-head-iowa-state-79126119

Study: Vaccinated People Can Carry as Much Virus as Others

 In another dispiriting setback for the nation’s efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, scientists who studied a big COVID-19 outbreak in Massachusetts concluded that vaccinated people who got so-called breakthrough infections carried about the same amount of the coronavirus as those who did not get the shots.

Health officials on Friday released details of that research, which was key in this week's decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend that vaccinated people return to wearing masks indoors in parts of the U.S. where the delta variant is fueling infection surges. The authors said the findings suggest that the CDC's mask guidance should be expanded to include the entire country, even outside of hot spots.

The findings have the potential to upend past thinking about how the disease is spread. Previously, vaccinated people who got infected were thought to have low levels of virus and to be unlikely to pass it to others. But the new data shows that is not the case with the delta variant.

The outbreak in Provincetown — a seaside tourist spot on Cape Cod in the county with Massachusetts’ highest vaccination rate — has so far included more than 900 cases. About three-quarters of them were people who were fully vaccinated.

Travis Dagenais, who was among the many vaccinated people infected, said “throwing caution to the wind” and partying in crowds for long nights over the July Fourth holiday was a mistake in hindsight.

“The dominant public messaging has been that the vaccine means a return to normal,” the 35-year-old Boston resident said Thursday. “Unfortunately, I’ve now learned it’s a few steps toward normal, not the zero-to-sixty that we seem to have undertaken.”

Dagenais credits being vaccinated with easing the worst of the flu-like symptoms in a couple of days. He has recovered.

Like many states, Massachusetts lifted all COVID-19 restrictions in late May, ahead of the traditional Memorial Day start of the summer season. Provincetown this week reinstated an indoor mask requirement for everyone.

Leaked internal documents on breakthrough infections and the delta variant suggest the CDC may be considering other changes in advice on how the nation fights the coronavirus, such as recommending masks for everyone and requiring vaccines for doctors and other health workers.

The delta variant, first detected in India, causes infections that are more contagious than the common cold, flu, smallpox and the Ebola virus, and it is as infectious as chickenpox, according to the documents, which mentioned the Provincetown cases.

The documents were obtained by The Washington Post. As they note, COVID-19 vaccines are still highly effective against the delta variant at preventing serious illness and death.

The Provincetown outbreak and the documents highlight the enormous challenge the CDC faces in encouraging vaccination while acknowledging that breakthrough cases can occur and can be contagious but are uncommon.

The documents appear to be talking points for CDC staff to use with the public. One point advised: “Acknowledge the war has changed,” an apparent reference to deepening concern that many millions of vaccinated people could be a source of wide-ranging spread.

An agency spokeswoman declined to comment on the documents.

The White House on Friday defended its approach to rising virus cases and shifting public health guidelines, repeatedly deferred to the CDC while stressing the need for vaccinations.

“The most important takeaway is actually pretty simple. We need more people to get vaccinated,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Pressed about the changing guidance, Jean-Pierre repeatedly said, “We don’t make those types of decisions from here.”

People with breakthrough infections make up an increasing portion of hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths among COVID-19 patients, coinciding with the spread of the delta variant, according to the leaked documents.

Although experts generally agreed with the CDC’s revised indoor masking stance, some said the report on the Provincetown outbreak does not prove that vaccinated people are a significant source of new infections.

“There’s scientific plausibility for the (CDC) recommendation. But it’s not derived from this study,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University public health researcher.

The CDC report is based on about 470 COVID-19 cases linked to the Provincetown festivities, which included densely packed indoor and outdoor holiday events at bars, restaurants, guest houses and rental homes.

Researchers ran tests on a portion of them and found roughly the same level of virus in those who were fully vaccinated and those who were not.

Three-quarters of the infections were in fully vaccinated individuals. Among those fully vaccinated, about 80% experienced symptoms with the most common being cough, headache, sore throat, muscle aches and fever.

Dagenais said he started to feel ill the evening he returned home and initially chalked it up to long nights of partying in packed Provincetown nightclubs.

But as the days wore on and the fever, chills, muscle aches and fatigue set in, he knew it was something more.

In the report, the measure researchers used to assess how much virus an infected person is carrying does not indicate whether they are actually transmitting the virus to other people, said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan.

CDC officials say more data is coming. They are tracking breakthrough cases as part of much larger studies that involve following tens of thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated people across the country over time.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-07-30/cdc-team-war-has-changed-as-delta-variant-dangers-emerge

Germany could make unvaccinated pay for COVID tests

 The German government plans to end free coronavirus tests once enough Germans are vaccinated, according to a newspaper report. Although 51% of the population is fully inoculated, the pace is slowing.

The government will stop paying for rapid antigen tests after sufficient numbers of German residents have been fully vaccinated, according to the Bild newspaper. 

The tabloid cited unnamed government sources as saying that two ministers were pushing for the change, possibly from the end of September.

At present, Germans are required to present a negative coronavirus test if they want to enter offices, some shops and restaurants and can get tested for free.

Testing sites have been expanded in recent months to include pharmacies.

Scholz and Söder back the plan

Finance minister and the center-left Social Democrat (SDP) chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz and Bavaria's premier Markus Söder have strongly endorsed the measure, according to Bild.

Scholz reportedly supported the measure because progress in getting people vaccinated meant that public funds shouldn't be used to test those who are unvaccinated for free.

Free tests are costing the government €3.4 billion ($4 billion dollars), according to Bild.

Separately, Scholz has reminded the public to get vaccinated. 

"We have to convince our friends to get vaccinated. This is a matter that touches every one of us," Scholz told newspapers of the Funke media group.

Politicians call for faster vaccination 

German politicians are also actively encouraging people to get their shots asthe school year, which typically begins in August, is drawing closer.

SPD leader Saskia Esken and the German Association of Cities have called for vaccination campaigns at schools. Esken said she supported mobile vaccination teams at education establishments.

Thorsten Frei, the deputy leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group for law and consumer protection, told Bild that free tests ought to continue for children since they're not eligible for vaccination yet.

 

Meanwhile, Germany is preparing for federal elections in September and the officer responsible for overseeing them has maintained that all necessary precautions for poll workers have been taken into account. 

So far, 51% percent of Germans have been fully vaccinated, but experts say it isn't enough to prevent the fourth wave of the pandemic.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-could-make-unvaccinated-pay-for-covid-tests-report/a-58713602

'CDC encourages use of new tests that detect both COVID-19 and flu'

 

 ' CLAIM: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revoked Emergency Use Authorization for coronavirus PCR tests because they were inaccurate, led to false positives and confused positive influenza cases with COVID-19.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. PCR tests are considered the gold standard for coronavirus testing. CDC announced after this year it will be withdrawing its request to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization for one early PCR test, not because that test is inaccurate, but because it can only detect coronavirus. Newer tests can now also test for influenza at the same time.

THE FACTS: The FDA has approved roughly 280 PCR coronavirus tests, which determine whether sequences from the viruses’ RNA genome are present in a patient’s nasal swab. Early in the pandemic, in February 2020, the CDC introduced a COVID-19 PCR test, known as the “CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel.”

Some newer coronavirus tests can now also simultaneously test whether a patient is positive for influenza, but the CDC’s February 2020 PCR test only has the capacity to detect signs of a COVID-19 infection.

On July 21, the CDC announced that after this year, it would no longer request an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA for that one test, which means laboratories will stop using it.

Kristen Nordlund, health communication specialist at the CDC, told The Associated Press the move was because newer PCR testing options now exist.

“The CDC 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019 nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel met an important unmet need when it was developed and deployed and has not demonstrated any performance issues,” Nordlund said.

She said the agency was encouraging labs to switch to tests that can also detect influenza at the same time, since it will “save both time and resources.”

But social media users misinterpreted and misrepresented the announcement. False claims circulated on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that the CDC’s move meant the agency and the FDA had admitted PCR tests do not work. Some posts online falsely said the test was unable to differentiate between coronavirus and influenza, leading to inflated COVID-19 counts and depressed flu counts.

In fact, PCR tests are designed to detect very specific areas of the viral genome, so tests do not get confused between which virus is present, said Matthew Binnicker, director of the clinical virology lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

“PCR tests, including the one developed by the CDC, are highly accurate and are able to differentiate between SARS-CoV-2 and influenza,” Binnicker said. “In other words, a COVID-19 test will not be positive if a person really has influenza, and vice versa.”

Binnicker said there are benefits to having one test that can detect both viruses, since the symptoms for both illnesses are often similar early on.

Furthermore, neither the CDC nor the FDA has cast any doubts on the effectiveness of PCR technology. “PCR tests are generally considered to be the ‘gold standard’ for COVID-19 diagnosis,” said James McKinney, a press officer for the FDA.

___

This is part of The Associated Press’ ongoing effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with Facebook and other platforms to add context to misleading content and reduce its circulation online.

Here’s more information on Facebook’s fact-checking program: https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536 '

https://www.kbtx.com/2021/07/29/cdc-encourages-use-new-tests-that-detect-both-covid-19-flu/

Labor’s Lockdown Losses

 Count organized labor among the groups slammed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The economic slowdown prompted by virus lockdowns has cost the union movement hundreds of thousands of private-sector members, wiping out years of gains in which labor had managed to recapture some of its membership after the dramatic losses of the 2008 recession. States with the highest degree of unionization, including those that have undergone long, severe lockdowns, such as California and New York, saw the greatest declines. Public unions, by contrast, managed to hold the line last year, thanks partly to growth in organized labor at the federal level, though they’ve never recaptured the membership that they lost a decade ago.

In 2020, the number of union members in the private sector fell by 428,000, to 7.08 million, a 5.7 percent decline. That’s now only slightly above the low for the last 70 years of 7.03 million members, recorded in 2012, when unions were still feeling the effects of the last recession and the slow economic recovery that followed it. The largest 2020 losses came in the broad category known as leisure and hospitality, which encompasses everything from sports venues, theaters, and amusement parks to hotels, casinos, and restaurants, all of which require most workers to perform their jobs on site. In these industries, over 40 percent of union jobs disappeared—a total of 161,000 members. Next hardest-hit was manufacturing, still one of the largest areas of private-sector union membership. Some 110,000 union positions, about 9 percent of the total, vanished last year. Another major union employer, the construction industry, shed 61,000 organized labor positions, while some 23,000 jobs disappeared in broadcasting and another 13,000 in the motion-picture business.

Only a few industries managed to increase union membership last year, including retailing, where the rise of e-commerce helped offset job losses among traditional stores; and transportation, where the growth of logistics firms helped deliver all those goods bought online. Public-sector unions also registered slight gains, as union members apparently kept their jobs even as the total number of government positions shrank. The largest area of public-sector gains came in federal employment during Donald Trump’s last year in office, as the number of unionized federal workers rose by some 40,000. Still, those small gains did little to reverse more than a decade of bad news for public-sector unions, which reached a membership peak in 2009, only to see a steady decline in virtually every year since then. Even with gains last year, membership in public unions remains more than 700,000 below its peak; today, some 34.8 percent of government workers are unionized, compared with 37.4 percent in 2009, according to unionstats.com.

The most heavily unionized states absorbed the biggest declines. Washington State, one of the earliest states affected by the pandemic and lockdowns, shed 81,000 union positions. New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo earned a reputation as one of the strictest lockdown advocates, recorded a loss of 71,000 union positions, followed by California, which absorbed a net loss of 63,000.

The severe lockdowns in some states have sent union leaders scrambling for solutions. In September, California union leaders joined industry executives to push Governor Gavin Newsom to reopen amusement parks like Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm and expressed frustration at the continuing lockdowns. “This is about preserving and retaining union jobs,” Ernesto Medrano, a representative for the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, told the press. “We don’t want any more layoffs. It’s time to go back to work.” But the parks remained closed well into 2021, even as Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Florida reopened in July 2020. Meanwhile, as vaccines became available in late 2020 in New York State, union leaders in industries devastated by Covid struggled in vain to persuade Cuomo to declare their members emergency workers so that they could get vaccinated and back on the job. “These workers have continued to put themselves at risk and have worked throughout this pandemic performing services that are critical to the State of New York,” an official with the Hotel Trades Council told Cuomo.

In one of 2020’s ironies, several states without a reputation as union strongholds managed to see their organized-labor ranks grow because of the nature of their economies. Texas led the way, with 66,000 new union positions. North Carolina, with just 3.1 percent of its private-sector workers organized, added 27,000 union positions. Another gainer was Pennsylvania, which added 41,000 union jobs and, along with Texas, almost certainly saw increases in union membership in the industries of gas and oil extraction—probably led by fracking activities.

Union leaders might take some comfort in predictions by economists that the post-pandemic rebound will be swift and robust. They’re also banking on a Democratic Congress to pass the so-called PRO Act, a union-friendly bill that would roll back state right-to-work laws and make organizing easier. Even so, the pandemic may have also caused structural changes in the economy that could undermine a union comeback. Bankruptcies have risen swiftly, undermining established companies. It’s possible that newer, nonunionized firms will step up to lead the post-pandemic rebound.

Steven Malanga is the senior editor of City Journal and the George M. Yeager Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

https://www.city-journal.org/steep-declines-in-union-memberships

NBER: Effects of Legalizing Pot

 Since 2012, 18 states and the nation’s capital have legalized recreational marijuana, even as it remains illegal under federal law. A new working paper released through the National Bureau of Economic Research has made a few of the consequences of this policy shift clearer.

The upshot is that marijuana legalization poses an obvious tradeoff: marijuana use goes up, while marijuana arrests go down. Most other hypothesized consequences, good and bad, remain uncertain. Alongside some clear conclusions, the paper has lots of imprecise, statistically insignificant findings.

In general, papers like this one analyze how trends differed between states that changed their marijuana laws and those that did not. For each outcome, the authors run the numbers a few ways, allowing readers to see how sensitive the results are to changes in the statistical models.

One commonsense effect of these policies is that pot use increases—at least according to self-report surveys, which remain (unfortunately) the best method we have for measuring the phenomenon. With legalization, the share of adults reporting pot use in the past 30 days increases by 1.6 to 3.6 percentage points, a 20 percent–40 percent gain from previous levels. This is concerning because, while pot is nowhere near as dangerous as some other drugs, it does have some negative effects on health and behavior.

The other obvious consequence of legalizing pot is that, well, pot is legal, and people aren’t arrested for it anymore, so long as they are of age and stay within the confines imposed by the new laws. According to the study, pot-possession arrests decline by more than 90 percent after legalization. Other drug arrests might decline somewhat as well, suggesting that states that legalize pot may also start taking a generally more lenient stance toward drugs.

The situation is less clear when it comes to other consequences that supporters and critics of these laws have suggested. For example, legal pot could in theory change arrest rates for other crimes, because legal pot drives people to commit crimes; because police have the resources to pursue other problems; or because diminishing the black market reduces crime. But the study detects little change in arrests for violent or property crime. Further research might also consider reports of crime, both to the police and in victimization surveys, to disentangle effects that might cut in opposite directions.

Another common theory is that legal pot will affect the use of harder drugs, either via a “gateway” effect (graduating from pot to worse things) or via “substitution” (using marijuana instead of other drugs). The authors report that legal pot doesn’t seem to increase use of, treatment admissions for, or deaths from hard drugs in general, and that the laws might even reduce opioid deaths.

However, the results on opioid deaths are imprecise and mostly statistically insignificant. This idea also has a tricky history in the literature. A 2014 study claimed that medical-marijuana laws reduced the toll of the opioid epidemic, but a 2019 study using the same methods found that, when later data were added to the model, the relationship not only weakened but reversed. There are various reasons why the effect might change over time or why recreational and medical pot laws might have different effects. Skepticism is warranted.

Further, while numerous studies have reported that users substitute marijuana for alcohol, this study finds no measurable change in binge drinking, alcohol-treatment admissions, or alcohol-related deaths for states that legalize pot.

Recreational-marijuana laws are less than a decade old. As time passes, we will learn more about longer-term effects and collect enough data to detect smaller effects than we can now. For the time being, we know that the tradeoffs suggested by common sense are real: fewer arrests, more pot smoking.

Robert VerBruggen is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

https://www.city-journal.org/nber-study-on-the-effects-of-legalizing-pot

AstraZeneca CEO: 'Not clear yet' if boosters needed

 The CEO of AstraZeneca said it is “not clear yet” if booster shots will be needed to maintain protection with its COVID-19 vaccine.

Pascal Soriot told CNBC on Thursday that the company does not have a “precise answer” on if booster shots will be needed because there are “two dimensions” to the shot’s immunity: antibodies and T-cells.

Soriot said that while antibody levels typically decline over time, the AstraZeneca vaccine has a “very high production of T-cells” with the technology they use.

He later noted, however, that the company has not yet seen a decline in efficacy, adding that “it’s a little bit early to judge, only time will tell.”

“So we are hoping that we can have a durable vaccine that protects for long period of times. So whether we will need a third booster or not is not clear yet, only time will tell,” Soriot said.

“The only way to know is really to watch whether efficacy declines over time,” he added.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been approved in the United States. A number of countries limited the use of the vaccine in past months because of a potential link to rare blood clots.

The conversation surrounding the possibility of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots has increased in recent weeks as new studies are finding that the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines may decline after a few months.

There is also increased concern about the highly infectious delta variant, which has spread rapidly in the U.S. and is now the dominant strain in the country.

Pfizer on Wednesday said a third shot of its COVID-19 vaccine “strongly” boosts protection against the delta variant. The company earlier this month said it will be applying to the Food and Drug Administration for authorization for a third shot.

Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on Sunday it is likely that vulnerable people who have already been inoculated against COVID-19 will need a booster shot.

“You have got to look at the data. And the data that's evolving from Israel and from Pfizer indicates that it looks like there might be some diminution in protection. And when you have that, the most vulnerable people are the ones that you were talking about a moment ago, namely, people who have suppressed immune systems, those who are transplant patients, cancer chemotherapy, autoimmune diseases, that are on immunosuppressive regimens,” Fauci said.

“Those are the kind of individuals that, if there's going to be a third boost, which might likely happen, would be among first the vulnerable. And the ACIP, which met on July 22, they discussed that in some detail and continue to look at the data that might push us in that direction,” Fauci added, referring to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which publishes recommendations on utilizing vaccines to control diseases in the U.S.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/565433-astrazeneca-ceo-not-clear-yet-if-boosters-are-needed