Manchin: Biden’s repeal of Title 42 order ‘a frightening decision’

 Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Friday slammed President Biden’s decision to rescind Title 42, a Trump-era health order used to rapidly deport people who cross the border without authorization, as “a frightening decision” that would likely increase the volume of migrants at the southern border.  

“Today’s announcement by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the Biden Administration is a frightening decision,” Manchin said in a statement after Biden’s announcement.   

“Title 42 has been an essential tool in combatting the spread of COVID-19 and controlling the influx of migrants at our southern border. We are already facing an unprecedented increase in migrants this year, and that will only get worse if the Administration ends the Title 42 policy,” Manchin warned. 

His office noted that U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced a record 1.7 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021, a number four times higher than what was reported in 2020.  

Border officials expect to break that record in 2022 — Border Patrol officers had 838,000 migrant encounters at the southern border during the first three months of the year.  

“We are nowhere near prepared to deal with that influx. Until we have comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform that commits to securing our borders and providing a pathway to citizenship for qualified immigrants, Title 42 must stay in place,” he said.  

Fellow centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) joined Manchin in pushing back against the administration, warning it would “risk the health and safety” of her constituents.  

“Prematurely ending Title 42 without a comprehensive, workable plan would put at risk the health and safety of Arizona communities and migrants. Today’s decision to announce an end to Title 42 despite not yet having a comprehensive plan ready shows a lack of understanding about the crisis at our border,” she said in a statement.  

She was supported by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a top GOP target in November’s midterm elections.   

“This is the wrong decision. It’s unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border,” Kelly said in a joint statement with Sinema.  

“From my numerous visits to the southern border and conversations with Arizona’s law enforcement, community leaders, mayors, and non-profits, it’s clear that this administration’s lack of a plan to deal with this crisis will further strain our border communities,” he added. 

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who is facing a competitive reelection race this fall, also criticized the administration’s decision.  

“Ending Title 42 prematurely will likely lead to a migrant surge that the administration does not appear to be ready for,” she tweeted on Friday.  

“I’ll keep pushing the administration to strengthen border security & look forward to hearing directly from border agents during my upcoming trip to the border,” she said.  

Biden’s decision to repeal Title 42 comes after more than a year of pressure from immigrant advocate groups that argued it improperly used health concerns about the spread of COVID-19 to deny migrants due process and asylum rights.  

The CDC implemented the health order at the start of the pandemic under former President Trump. 

The CDC said Friday that the order to suspend migrant entry into the country is “no longer necessary” because public health conditions have improved due to the availability of vaccines and therapeutic drugs.

Republicans on Capitol Hill immediately criticized the decision.  

“The Biden Administration’s messaging on the status of and response to COVID-19 continues to be a contradictory mess,” said Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. 

“On the one hand, the Administration is clamoring for additional emergency funding and costing taxpayers $5 billion per month by delaying student loan repayments, citing the continued threat of COVID-19,” he noted. “On the other hand, they’re rescinding safeguards in place to prevent new, potentially undetected variants from entering the country and encouraging Americans to return to normal life.” 

“They cannot have it both ways. The inconsistencies, particularly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, do not inspire confidence that these decisions are being made based on science instead of politics,” he added.  

https://thehill.com/news/senate/3256527-manchin-bidens-repeal-of-title-42-order-a-frightening-decision/

More Americans support than oppose 15-week abortion bans: WSJ poll

 As the fight around abortion prepares for new decisions this summer at the Supreme Court, a new poll from The Wall Street Journal found more Americans support a ban on abortions 15 weeks or more into a pregnancy than oppose it.

In the poll, 48 percent said they strongly or somewhat favored a 15-week abortion ban with the exception of protecting the health of the mother, while 43 percent were opposed to such a ban. 

The poll found 31 percent strongly supported the ban, and 17 percent somewhat supported it. On the opposite side, about 34 percent strongly opposed the measure, while around 10 percent somewhat opposed it. 

The results come as multiple Republican-led states have passed bills that ban abortions after the pregnant person is 15 weeks into the pregnancy. 

The Supreme Court, now with a 6-3 conservative majority after former President Trump made three appointments confirmed by a GOP Senate, is set to consider a Mississippi law banning abortions 15 weeks into a pregnancy.

The state law is one of several that have been moved through GOP legislatures to limit abortion rights.

President Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson would not change the makeup of the court, which would retain the 6-3 conservative majority if she is confirmed by the Senate, as expected.

Although more respondents supported than opposed the 15-week ban, a majority of voters said abortions should be legal in all or most cases. 

Fifty-five percent supported the legality of abortion in most cases, 30 percent said it should only be legal in cases of rape, incest or health of the mother, and 11 percent said it should be illegal in all cases.

The results underscore the complexity of abortion opinions in America.

“A majority opposes overturning Roe v. Wade but most would support moving the viability threshold to 15 weeks instead of 24 weeks,” Mark Penn, the co-director of a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, said back in December.

The new poll was conducted between March 2 and March 7 among 1,500 registered voters. The margin of error regarding the support for 15-week abortion bans was 3.6 percentage points, while the margin of error for whether abortion should be legal was 2.5 percentage points.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3256814-more-americans-support-than-oppose-15-week-abortion-banswsj-poll/

Putin the Poisoner strikes again

 Russian President Vladimir Putin has set Ukraine afire, killing many thousands and reducing ancient cities such as Mariupol to ashes. His pursuit of dreams of conquest has led to his new nickname, Vlad the Mad. But long before he was Vlad the Mad, he was dubbed Putin the Poisoner.

His old moniker was in the news again this week after the chemical or biological poisoning of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and other Ukrainian peace negotiators, who suddenly developed inexplicable physical symptoms. It was hardly Putin’s first suspected poisoning.

He is heir to a century-long tradition of poisonings, beginning with Stalin’s establishment of the notorious poison lab known as Laboratory One in downtown Moscow and massive biowar facilities at Saratov, still in use today. When direct execution or simple disappearance was politically undesirable or impractical, Stalin used secret poisons and bioweapons like curare, potassium and anthrax to stage seemingly natural deaths.

As Soviet KGB defector Walter Krivitsky famously said, “Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a good natural death.” A variety of famous people succumbed to Stalin’s poisons and bioweapons, ranging from the brutal founder of the KGB Felix Dzerzhinksy and Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon to the prima ballerina Anna Pavlova and short-story writer Maxim Gorky. It is also believed that both Lenin and Stalin himself were poisoned.

In a 2012 presidential debate, Putin bragged of Russia’s “genetic” weapons (the successors to the USSR’s notorious Project Enzyme Biowar Project). Later, in a 2017 speech to Russian security operatives, he singled out the famous poison leader, Yakov Serebryansky, as the greatest of all Soviet agents. Putin has not only heralded Russia’s “special” weapons — he has used them over and over again.

Shortly after Putin’s 2000 election as Russia’s prime minister, Anatoly Sobchak, Putin’s mentor who described Putin as a “new Stalin,” died suddenly with no prior symptoms of an apparent heart attack. Both of his bodyguards likewise developed simultaneous coronary problems. In a parade of convenient deaths, more than 20 opposition journalists and political opponents strangely died from unsolved shootings, poisonings, car bombings and “natural” deaths, which, like so many in Stalin’s day, were anything but natural.

Recently, as he was led to jail, likely for the rest of his life, brave poisoning victim and Putin opponent Alexei Navalny said, “[Putin’s] only method is killing people. For as much as he pretends to be a great geopolitician, he will go down in history as a poisoner.”

Putin, like Stalin’s famous Yasha Group of the 1920-30s, deals death by poisons and bioweapons through a highly-decorated, secret group known as Unit 29155, based for a time in France. The unit has been implicated in many murders in England, France and elsewhere using a variety of poisons. A likely victim even includes Stalin’s own grandson Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, found dead of unknown causes immediately after accusing Putin of being “without brains.”

Unit 29155 has also been particularly active in Ukraine, poisoning its Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin in 2004, causing severe facial disfigurement, and possibly poisoning Russia’s Ministry of Defense Head Sergei Shoigu for recent failures in Ukraine causing a sudden heart attack.

Unit 29155 is believed to have poisoned at least 14 people in England alone, including the attack on former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018. Perhaps the most famous of Putin’s poisoning victims is Russian defector and former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Addressing Putin from his deathbed in 2006, Litvinenko stated, “You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.”

Putin has earned his nickname of Putin the Poisoner, escalating from retail poisoning of political opponents to wholesale murder of many thousands in the ruins of Ukraine. His biowar facilities at Saratov and in the Urals are the most sophisticated on Earth and controlled by a man who fancies himself a second Stalin.

The great writer Gorky, shortly before his likely poisoning death by Stalin, analogized Stalin in his diary to an ordinary flea magnified several thousand times into the most fearful animal on Earth, penning, “Stalin is a flea which Bolshevik propaganda and the hypnosis of fear have magnified to unbelievable proportions.”

Putin the Poisoner similarly strives to be a fearsome creature under the microscope of his possession of poisons, bioweapons and nuclear weapons.

John O’Neill, a New York Times number one bestselling author, and Sarah Wynne are the co-authors of “The Dancer and The Devil” (Regnery, April 26, 2022), a forthcoming account of murders and biowar by Stalin, Putin and Xi.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3255920-putin-the-poisoner-strikes-again/

DeSantis says he thinks Disney shouldn’t have special self-governing status

 Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) appeared to support eliminating Disney’s special status that allows it to operate as an independent government in the area around its Orlando park.

“Disney has alienated a lot of people now,” DeSantis said Thursday at a press conference in West Palm Beach. “And so the political influence they’re used to wielding, I think has dissipated. And so the question is, why would you want to have special privileges in the law at all? And I don’t think that that we should.”

The special status, which Disney has had since 1967, gave the company the legal right to operate under its own government around Walt Disney World in central Florida, according to CNN.

The comments come amid an escalating feud between DeSantis and Disney over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans schools in the state from educating children about gender identity or sexual orientation.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek received criticism for not speaking out against the bill before it was passed by the state legislature, but after DeSantis signed the bill into law this week, the company pledged to help repeal the bill.DeSantis said in response to the pledge that Disney “crossed the line” and that his state is not run by “California corporate executives.”

Florida’s bill comes as a number of other states have passed legislation that targets LGBTQ schoolchildren. Several states have either introduced or passed bills that ban the use of gender-affirming treatment for transgender youth, such as puberty blockers or gender-affirming surgeries.

Florida has also passed a bill banning transgender students from participating on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3256864-desantis-says-he-thinks-disney-shouldnt-have-special-self-governing-status/

Change Healthcare in Advanced Talks for Sale of ClaimsXten to New Mountain

 Change Healthcare Inc. is in advanced talks to sell its payment integrity business to private equity firm New Mountain Capital, according to people with knowledge of the matter. 

A deal would value the business, ClaimsXten, at more than $2 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

A final agreement with New Mountain hasn’t been reached and the talks could end without one, the people said. A deal may also depend on whether Change’s takeover by UnitedHealth Group Inc. unravels.

Representatives for Change, based in Nashville, Tennessee, and New Mountain declined to comment.

Bloomberg reported in January that Change was considering selling assets to help clear the way for its $7.8 billion acquisition by UnitedHealth. The U.S. Justice Department had opened an investigation into the transaction in March 2021, two months after it was announced, putting the deal in regulatory limbo.

The Justice Department sued in February to block the proposed deal, arguing it could limit competition among businesses that move money through the health-care system. Change has said it intends to continue working to close the merger.

UnitedHealth and Change have until April 5 to complete their deal, according to the amended merger agreement, unless the deadline is extended.

It isn’t clear whether the ClaimsXten divestment would go ahead if the merger falls apart, though UnitedHealth and Change told the Justice Department in a March filing that they had agreed to divest the business months ago.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/change-healthcare-in-advanced-talks-for-sale-of-claimsxten-to-new-mountain-1.1746586

John Ioannidis: 'Public Health Officials Need To Declare The End Of The Pandemic'

 by Ross Pomeroy via RealClear Science,

John Ioannidis, a Professor of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health and by courtesy, of Statistics and of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University, lauded for championing evidence-based medicine, has been harshly criticized over the past two years. Like many highly-credentialed health experts, Ioannidis made some predictions during the pandemic that eventually proved to be incorrect. During a once-in-a-century pandemic replete with unknowns, that's to be expected. But perhaps the greatest reason he has come under fire is for questioning the orthodoxy of strict lockdowns, divisive vaccine mandates, and other restrictive measures to manage the pandemic. Ioannidis is sure to court more controversy with a new commentary published to the European Journal of Clinicial Investigation in which he argues that it's time to declare the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This does not mean that the problem is inappropriately minimized or forgotten, but that our communities move on with life," he writes.

"Pandemic preparedness should be carefully thought and pre-organized, but should not disrupt life."

While Ioannidis recognizes that there are no quantitative definitions for the end of a pandemic like COVID-19, he contends that the amount of immunity now present worldwide exceeds the threshold needed to declare SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, endemic – constantly present but not a public health emergency.

"By end 2021, probably 73-81% of the global population had been vaccinated, infected or both," he says. Pockets of low immunity, such as in places that pursued zero-COVID policies and/or with limited access to effective vaccines, may persist, causing regional outbreaks, but we will likely never see COVID-19 again trigger a global emergency.

Declaring the pandemic phase of COVID-19 to be concluded means understanding and accepting a new "normal".

"A decrease of COVID-19 deaths back to typical seasonal influenza levels may not necessarily happen in 2022 or even beyond," Ioannidis cautions. "With an increasingly aging global population, "normal" may still correspond to higher death counts... This should not be mistaken as a continued pandemic phase."

Easing out of the pandemic requires a widespread mental shift, as well. This means focusing more on indicators like hospital intensive care admissions to guide policy rather than just infections.

"If perception of risk focuses on number of documented cases, the spurious perception of emergency situations may be difficult to quell," Ioannidis writes.

Exiting the pandemic also means reducing fearmongering coverage of COVID-19 in the popular media, the propagation of which undoubtedly contributed to the public's warped perception of COVID's risks throughout the pandemic. On average, Americans believed in early 2021 that 8% of deaths had occurred in people under the age of 24. The actual percentage as of today is 0.3%. Moreover, a third of the population has consistently believed that COVID leads to hospitalization in over half of infections. During the most recent Omicron wave, the proportion was 3% or lower.

Declaring an end to the pandemic phase of COVID-19 has benefits, Ioannidis says. For example, it could allow public health organizations to refocus their time and money on more pressing global health issues, like poor nutrition and hunger, which collectively claim the lives of 9 million people each year, including 3.1 million children. For comparison, at least 6.2 million people have died from COVID-19 over the past two years, the vast majority over age 65. Accepting endemicity and reducing societal restrictions and disruptions would also permit economies to stabilize more rapidly, alleviating hardship, easing inflation, and reducing global inequality. Lastly, moving on from the pandemic could ease some of the political divisions that have fractured societies across the globe.

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/john-ioannidis-public-health-officials-need-declare-end-pandemic

FDA approves Gilead cell therapy for earlier lymphoma

 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved expanded use of Yescarta, a cell therapy made by Gilead Sciences Inc's (GILD.O) Kite unit, as a first option after chemotherapy for adults with an advanced, aggressive form of blood cancer.

The one-time treatment was initially approved in 2017 for patients with large B-cell lymphoma who did not respond to at least two previous rounds of therapy.

Yescarta is part of a class of treatments known as CAR-Ts, which involve taking immune system blood cells from a patient, shipping them to a plant to be re-engineered to better fight certain cancers and then returning them to the patient.

The FDA's decision will increase to around 14,000 from 8,000 the number of lymphoma patients eligible for the therapy, Christi Shaw, Kite's chief executive, told Reuters last month in Philadelphia at Reuters Events: Pharma USA.

The complex treatment has a U.S. list price of $399,000.

"Current standard of care is a difficult process. ... With today's FDA decision, patients will have earlier access to this potentially curative treatment," Lee Greenberg, chief scientific officer at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, said in a statement.

Kite's trial results showed that Yescarta improved the length of time patients stayed alive without serious complications by 60% over chemotherapy and stem cell transplant in second-line large B-cell lymphoma.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network, the most influential source of U.S. oncology treatment guidelines, has already listed Yescarta in the first category of treatments for those patients.

The FDA said the drug's label warns of a serious complication associated with CAR-T therapy called cytokine release syndrome, which can cause a range of dangerous symptoms including fever and neurological problems.

Shaw said Kite's biggest challenge remains getting U.S. oncologists to refer eligible patients to hospitals that are set up to administer cell therapies. About 100 treatment centers are authorized in the United States, and 270 worldwide, according to Kite.

"Out of 10 eligible patients only two are actually getting cell therapy," Shaw said. "Our job is to convince physicians to change their habits."

Kite is building a new CAR-T manufacturing site in Maryland, to expand capacity from current sites in Amsterdam and El Segundo, California.

"That manufacturing piece really does matter," Shaw said. "In cell therapy, it means the patient either does or doesn't get their cells back."

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-fda-approves-gilead-cell-therapy-earlier-lymphoma-2022-04-01/