'COVID Vaccination Mitigates Post-Infection Mental Illness': FDA Biotech Office Founder

 Misguided COVID minimizers say COVID-19 is no worse than a cold that lasts a few days and disappears without a trace. They’re so wrong, and the evidence of that continues to mount.

In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified the onset of new conditions after infection that “might be related to their previous COVID-19 illness.”

We’ve learned more from subsequent research. A study last year in the journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine that examined the longer-term effects of COVID found that nearly a third of patients displayed abnormalities, some of which reflect tissue damage, in multiple organs five months after infection. Magnetic resonance imaging scans of patients showed a higher burden of abnormal findings involving the lungs, brain and kidneys. Lung abnormalities were almost 14-fold higher among COVID patients discharged from a hospital than in the control group. At the same time, abnormal findings involving the brain and kidneys were three and two times higher, respectively.

A more recent study by British researchers, published in JAMA Psychiatry in August, describes mental health sequelae of COVID-19 infection and illustrates the critical role vaccination plays in mitigating these effects. Encompassing 18 million people, it found that those who were unvaccinated and contracted severe COVID-19 have a significantly heightened risk of developing mental illnesses. That risk can persist for up to a year after infection.

The British study provides compelling evidence that the virus poses more than a short-term physical threat — it can leave lasting scars on mental health, especially for those who experience severe illness and hospitalization. The study tracked various mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, addiction, self-harm and suicide. The findings are alarming: The incidence of these conditions spiked in the weeks following a severe COVID diagnosis, particularly among the unvaccinated.

In unvaccinated individuals, the likelihood of developing depression after hospitalization for COVID was up to 16.3 times higher than in those who did not contract the virus. This elevated risk did not diminish with time. It persisted, often affecting mental health for up to a year after the initial diagnosis. The study’s results add to a growing body of evidence that underscores the severe and prolonged mental health effects of COVID, especially when compounded by the stress and trauma of a serious infection.

A significant finding of the study is the protective effect of COVID vaccination against the effects on mental health. The researchers found that vaccinated individuals who contracted COVID-19 were far less likely to develop mental illnesses than their unvaccinated counterparts. This difference was particularly pronounced in cases of severe illness leading to hospitalization.

For example, while the incidence of depression and other serious mental health conditions surged in unvaccinated individuals following a severe illness, vaccinated people had significantly lower rates of post-infection mental illness, with some conditions showing nearly negligible elevation above baseline, compared to those who had not been vaccinated.

This stark contrast highlights vaccination as a crucial tool not just in preventing severe physical illness, hospitalization and death but in safeguarding mental health in the aftermath of a COVID infection.

The implications of these findings are critical for public health strategies and individuals’ decision-making moving forward. As we continue to grapple with the long-term consequences of the pandemic, understanding the broader effects of COVID on mental health becomes increasingly important.

Serious mental illnesses, such as those linked to severe COVID, can be associated with longer-term adverse outcomes and the need for intensive healthcare, and mitigating these risks through vaccination could relieve some of the burdens on healthcare systems already stretched thin.

The findings of the British study serve as a reminder of the multifaceted effect of COVID-19. It’s not just about surviving the virus; it’s about understanding and addressing the long-term consequences. Vaccination is more important than ever, a shield not just against the physical ravages of the virus but against the insidious mental health challenges that can follow in its wake. Getting one of the approved COVID vaccine boosters should be on everyone’s to-do list.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

https://dcjournal.com/covid-vaccination-mitigates-post-infection-mental-illness/

Lessons from Massive Pandemic Unemployment Fraud

 A new report (“Examining Widespread Fraud in Pandemic Unemployment Relief Programs”) authored by the majority staff of the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability spotlights the massive fraud and abuse inflicted on unemployment benefits during the pandemic. More importantly, it identifies why the abuse occurred, where the misspending was at its worst, and what steps are needed to prevent a repeat of such massive ripoffs. 

The report, released as the committee conducted a hearing on next steps to address pandemic fraud, recounts official government fraud and misspending figures that, while not new, are nonetheless astonishing:

• [T]he U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that about 11 to 15 percent of total benefits paid during the pandemic were fraudulent, totaling between $100 to $135 billion.
  
• The Department of Labor (DOL) Office of Inspector General (OIG) estimated that at least $191 billion in pandemic UI [unemployment insurance] payments could have been improperly paid, with a significant portion attributable to fraud.
  
• In August 2023, DOL reported that the PUA program had a total improper payment rate of 35.9 percent.

Unofficial estimates suggest improper unemployment benefit payments may have reached twice the official level, potentially costing taxpayers $400 billion or “about a 40 percent loss rate.”

The report cites multiple factors contributing to elevated fraud and misspending, including outdated IT systems, staffing shortages, and simply the unprecedented crush of benefit claims during the pandemic.  But it highlights that “Congress and executive branch actions created problems for states and the economy” while placing special blame on the flawed design of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program Congress hastily created in March 2020:

The design of the PUA program led to massive fraud. During the program’s first nine months, claimants did not have to provide any evidence of earnings which made the program susceptible to fraud. Only when Congress reauthorized the PUA program in December 2020, did states require applicants to provide proof of prior employment and wages.

Beyond federal mistakes, the report reviews states where misspending was greatest, and reserves its most detailed criticisms for California. Early in the pandemic, Julie Su led California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA), which oversees the Employment Development Department (EDD) that pays unemployment benefits. President Biden has since nominated Su to be DOL Secretary, although her nomination remains stalled despite Democratic control of the Senate.

As the report notes,

EDD, under the leadership of LWDA Secretary Julie Su, made the decision early in the pandemic to ‘pay and chase’ after Su was informed that keeping integrity checks in place would lead to backlog in processing claims largely due to EDD’s outdated IT….

This led to many bad actors like international organized crime and individual criminals cashing in while eligible claimants were unable to obtain their benefits. Initial reports about the amount of UI fraud being committed in California were so extreme some industry experts wondered if hackers had gained control of EDD’s outdated IT… Despite repeated warnings from OIG and ETA [Employment and Training Administration], EDD did not make any substantive changes to its fraud detection practices until late July 2020 when it finally began automating stopping payment on suspicious claims.

The results included lengthy delays in accessing benefits for deserving California residents alongside tens of billions of dollars in improper payments to criminals.

The report includes a number of worthy recommendations to improve future emergency responses, several of which track recommendations Amy Simon and I proposed in our January 2024 report on unemployment benefit fraud:

• All future temporary UI benefits programs must require claimants to provide proof of prior work before claims will be reviewed for eligibility.
  
• All future temporary UI benefits programs must require state workforce agencies to cross-check claimant PII [Personally Identifiable Information] against all available databases, such as federal prisoner databases, as recommended by OIG and law enforcement, prior to approving benefits.
  
• States and state workforce agencies should prioritize modernizing IT systems to process UI claims.
  
• Congress should strongly weigh the long-term implications of any proposal to expand regular UI to include those groups of individuals eligible for PUA benefits, including the self-employed, gig workers, and independent contractors, as it is simply too difficult to verify that those individuals are unemployed through no fault of their own, are ready, willing, and able to work, and are actively seeking work as required by federal UC programs.  

As bad as the massive abuse inflicted on taxpayers during the pandemic was, the only thing that would be worse is if lawmakers failed to recognize the causes of those losses and simply repeated past mistakes. The committee’s report offers a detailed guidebook of what went wrong during the pandemic, which future lawmakers should heed both in administering regular unemployment benefits and especially in designing future emergency responses.

https://www.aei.org/center-on-opportunity-and-social-mobility/new-report-details-lessons-from-massive-pandemic-unemployment-fraud/

Welfare Is What’s Eating the Budget

 Ask any budget expert in Washington to explain the ballooning deficit and debt, and Social Security and Medicare will be high on the list of causes. That’s wrong. The real driver, the elephant in the room, is means-tested social-welfare spending—Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold.

True, Social Security and Medicare are a drain on general revenue and will become big fiscal problems if not reformed. But they aren’t the major source of our current fiscal crisis, because both are financed in large part by dedicated payroll taxes. Since its inception, Social Security has produced cash surpluses 60% of the time. In 2023 Social Security payroll taxes funded 88.9% of benefits. The cost of Social Security’s Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program, net of payroll tax collections, was only $88.1 billion. Medicare payroll taxes and premiums funded 49.7% of Medicare expenditures, producing a net cost of $509 billion.

Means-tested social-welfare spending totaled $1.6 trillion in 2023. Welfare spending now absorbs an astonishing 72.6% of unobligated general revenue (total revenue net of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes and premiums and mandatory interest on the public debt) and is larger than the claims against unobligated general revenue by Social Security (4.1%), Medicare (23.5%) and defense (37.2%) combined.

Since funding for the War on Poverty ramped up in 1967, welfare payments received by the average work-age household in the bottom quintile of income recipients has risen from $7,352 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars to $64,700 in 2022, the last year with available household income data. This 780% increase was 9.2 times the rise in income earned by the average American household.

Since 1967 defense spending has fallen from 68% of unobligated general revenue to 37.2% in 2023, almost a mirror image of the growth in means-tested welfare benefits. As defense spending plummeted, swords weren’t beaten into plowshares, which would have increased economic growth and wages, but were instead used to fund welfare payments. As a result, the U.S. today redistributes a larger share of its gross domestic product, 29.4%, through transfers and taxes than any developed country in the world except France with 30.1%.

After counting all transfer payments as income to the recipients and taxes as income lost by taxpayers, and adjusting for household size, the average households in the bottom, second and middle quintiles all have roughly the same incomes—despite dramatic differences in work effort. With the explosion of means-tested transfer payments, the portion of prime work-age persons in the bottom quintile who actually work has fallen to 36% from 68%. In the second quintile, households with a work-age adult who actually works have declined to 85% from 90%. While work effort fell in the bottom two quintiles, the percentage of middle-income households with a prime work-age person who works has risen to 92% from 86%.

The injustice of this government-created income equality is palpable. For about the same income, 2.4 times as many work-age persons in the second quintile actually work and on average work 85% more hours than those in the bottom quintile. And 2.5 times as many work-age middle-income persons actually work and work on average 108% more hours.

Americans overwhelmingly support an effective mandatory work requirement for able-bodied adults receiving welfare benefits. That’s evident in public opinion polls and ballot measures; in purple Wisconsin almost 80% of voters supported this in 2023. The bipartisan effort to reform Aid to Families with Dependent Children during the Clinton administration was a success.

Despite the subsequent granting of numerous waivers of work requirements, according to the Congressional Research Service, the 1996 Clinton welfare reforms reduced the rate of dependency of families on what is now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families by 80%. Six years after the adoption of the reforms, the number of program beneficiaries had fallen dramatically, the labor-force participation rate of never-married mothers had increased, and child poverty had declined. State-imposed work requirements for food-stamp eligibility in Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Florida have thus far also been successful.

Demand for reform would be even stronger if the public understood how generous social-welfare benefits are. In reporting household income, the Census Bureau doesn’t count 88% of transfer payments made to households that are defined as being poor. The census doesn’t count refundable tax credits (for which the beneficiary receives a check from the Treasury), food-stamp debit cards, free medical care through Medicaid, or benefits from about 100 other federal transfer payments as income to welfare recipients. When those benefits are counted as income, 80% of those who are today counted as being poor are no longer poor, and almost half have incomes equivalent to American middle-income earners.

A mandatory welfare work requirement for able-bodied adults receiving welfare benefits, a requirement that the Census Bureau count all transfer payments as income, and a mandate that all federal agencies use the same income measure when determining eligibility for welfare would be major steps toward righting the nation’s finances.

Requiring all able-bodied Americans to work as a condition for receiving welfare would do more than reduce the deficit. It would bring people back into the economy, the source of prosperity and economic independence. A job is the best nutrition, housing, healthcare, education, child-care and general welfare program. That welfare reform isn’t a major issue in the November elections is a missed opportunity to improve the well-being of low-income families and the overall economic health of the nation.

Phil Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Jodey. Arrington, a Texas Republican, is chairman of the House Budget Committee. John Early and Mike Solon contributed to this article.

https://welfare-is-whats-eating-the-budget.tiiny.co/

Kirby tells the truth on Afghanistan failure: For Biden-Harris, dead soldiers mean nothing

 National Security Council spokesman John Kirby accidentally told the truth about the Biden-Harris view of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal: When members of the arms forces criticize you, arrogantly double down. 

“Obviously no use in responding. A ‘handful’ of vets indeed and all of one stripe,” smirked Kirby in a note he accidentally cc’d a reporter on, referring to criticism from four veterans slamming the flack and his bosses.

This is the attitude taken by a White House that utterly botched our withdrawal from a key geostrategic hotspot. 

By a cadre of political careerists who let Afghanistan fall to a bloodthirsty terrorist enemy and saw 13 service members killed in a terrorist attack on Kabul airport. 

No use in responding. Pathetic. 

And it’s only appropriate that Kirby would blow himself up like this via a mistaken “Reply all” — the story of administration incompetence in a nutshell. 

Kirby’s boss, Joe Biden, has displayed an identical callousness. 

Checking his watch during the ceremony for the soldiers his failed policies got killed. 

Keeping the families of those honored dead at a distance.

Insanely blaming his predecessor Donald Trump for the carnage he himself caused. 

Kirby’s plainly rattled by the House Foreign Services Committee’s release of a damning, 350-page report on the catastrophe, the result of a multi-year probe, that places blame squarely on the shoulders of the president he serves. 

But the correct response would be chastened humility — not cold, partisan indifference to the human costs of Biden’s failure.

Yes, partisan: Kirby’s line plainly implies that the vets would be worth responding to, if they had different politics. 

That’s the moral core of Biden-Harris: Politics above all. 

It’s killing Americans at home and abroad, and a Harris victory in November will ensure only ugly continuity. 

https://nypost.com/2024/09/12/opinion/john-kirby-tells-the-truth-on-afghanistan-failure-for-biden-harris-dead-soldiers-mean-nothing/

Stop lying about Afghanistan, Kamala — your weakness wrecked Trump’s plan

 Too often, lying and politics go hand in hand. But lying to cover up responsibility for the deaths of 13 brave Americans in Afghanistan is reprehensible and dishonors their memory. 

Kamala Harris is rewriting history and gaslighting the American public to shift blame from her administration’s failed policy in Afghanistan that created death and chaos and turned that country — and billions of dollars of US military assets — over to the Taliban.  

Their failure in Afghanistan led to the destruction of American credibility in the world — and led directly to Iran attacking our ally Israel and Russia invading our ally Ukraine in Europe.

Four years ago the world was, objectively, a safer place. 

Putin hadn’t invaded Ukraine. Iran was incapable of providing weapons to Russia to kill innocent Ukrainians. Hamas, with the support and direction of Iran, hadn’t murdered Israelis and Americans. China wasn’t saber-rattling against Taiwan and ramming Philippine ships. 

And, vitally, Afghanistan hadn’t seen an American casualty for over a year as our military continued to draw down responsibly and strategically. 

The foreign-policy failures of the Biden-Harris administration are staggering, but instead of accountability, Harris has decided to blame, deflect and outright lie to propel her career forward. 

Americans deserve better. They deserve the truth.

First, let’s be clear about the facts. President Trump was the first person who wanted our military servicemembers to come home.

Still, he knew we had to do it in a responsible way that ensured our military stayed safe, the gains that were achieved at American expense — including for women and girls — could be maintained and Afghanistan couldn’t once again be used as a base of operations against America or her interests.  

While our goal was to bring every American soldier home, the facts on the ground, as well as the recommendations from our military and intelligence services, did not support abandoning Bagram Air Base and taking the last uniformed service members out of the country. 

This was still true less than a year later, when Biden and Harris decided to withdraw our military in a matter of days. 

And those two knew it. The resulting disaster was entirely predictable.

During the final year of the Trump administration, conditions were improving in Afghanistan and the Taliban was in check — indeed, it knew it had to abide by our conditions for withdrawal, otherwise there would have been swift and harsh consequences. 

The plan the Trump administration produced — and left for the incoming administration — was working. 

But that plan did not lock the next administration into a timetable or date certain for total withdrawal, as Harris claims.  

For the Harris campaign to now claim that we left them with “zero plans for an orderly withdrawal” is a lie.

The detailed plan we left was a conditions-based approach that required all parties — including both the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban — to meet the stipulations of a durable agreement that left a stable Afghanistan where human rights, particularly those of women, were respected.

Biden and Harris abandoned this plan, putting the fulfillment of a campaign promise above the security of the Afghan people and our own.  They rushed for the exits against the advice of senior military members. 

Our plan also included a signed simultaneous agreement with the government of Afghanistan. For the Harris campaign to now claim that we entered an agreement with the Taliban without discussing it with the Afghan government is fiction.

Harris’ campaign also claims that we gave the Taliban permission to attack Americans if we did not withdraw. Again, that’s fiction. 

In our negotiations with the Taliban, the Trump administration successfully established a model of deterrence that kept Americans safe. 

We drew clear lines, and the Taliban understood that it was dealing with an administration that would enforce those lines.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the ones responsible for the deadly attacks on US forces that occurred during the withdrawal. 

They exuded weakness and invited aggression by announcing a date certain and removing the military first from the country, allowing chaos and the Taliban to reign in Afghanistan.

Lastly, the Harris campaign is claiming that the Trump administration’s agreements in the region tied its hands. This is completely absurd.

Since our plan was conditions-based, she and Biden could have established a timeline based on those conditions and continued an orderly drawdown.

Instead, they locked the US into a certain withdrawal date by publicly announcing it in April 2021. 

Ironically, America would have been better off if Biden and Harris had followed all that we did to keep America safe, from our southern border to the Middle East. 

For Harris to say their hands were tied in Afghanistan belies the reality of what they did in every other theater of conflict.

Biden and Harris’ decision to leave in a way that put our soldiers at risk had nothing to do with honoring our agreement: They didn’t follow through with our agreement.  

This was a political decision made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who have no idea how to keep our soldiers safe or how to maintain the United States’ deterrence.

It was a stunning and tragic failure — made even worse by their efforts to simply sweep it under the rug and act as if it didn’t happen.

This “surrender” did not occur when the Trump administration signed an agreement outlining the conditions for an orderly withdrawal of our forces.

The surrender occurred when the decision was made to leave before the conditions were right — when Harris was “the last person in the room.”

This November, Americans should consider what will happen if Kamala Harris is elected our commander-in-chief and is truly the last person in the room when countless American lives are on the line.

Mike Pompeo was US secretary of state from 2018 to 2021.

https://nypost.com/2024/09/12/opinion/harris-biden-weakness-wrecked-trumps-afghanistan-plan/

Trump wins on message: You were better off 4 years ago

 For Donald Trump to win in November, he needs to remind voters that their lives were better when he was president and that they will be better again if he is reelected. He cannot take the bait. He must be disciplined to stay on message every day to win. Thankfully, the facts are on his side.

Americans are not better off today than they were when Mr. Trump was in office. “ABC Nightly News” anchor David Muir began the debate this week with a lengthy statement for Vice President Kamala Harris that ended with the question, “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

She ignored the question and responded with the glib answer, “So, I was raised as a middle-class kid.” That’s because she has no real answer.

Four years of the Biden-Harris economy have been rough on many Americans, particularly the middle class. Prices have increased about 20%, while housing costs in my home state alone have increased nearly 30%. Filling the gas tank of my Chevrolet Traverse at the Kwik Trip in Delafield, Wisconsin, costs about $1.25 more per gallon than four years ago.

Ms. Harris proposes cost controls by the federal government. Anyone who prefers that approach must also select the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service over United Parcel Service or FedEx. Most of us know that the federal government is more likely to screw things up than solve our problems.

Actions taken in the past 3½ years to drive up federal spending, increase government red tape and hinder American energy production are the driving factors behind high inflation that leads to soaring prices. The Biden-Harris administration is behind these problems and should bear much of the responsibility for high prices in the United States. Giving the federal government more authority over the economy is dangerous.

History has shown governments that were given major power over their economies have seen major shortages in the availability of products such as food, fuel and housing. The former Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea are examples of the problems that come with too much government control over the market.

Search “food lines in Venezuela” online to see what happened to this formerly prosperous nation once it adopted these socialist policies. The middle class gets stuck just as much as the poor in this country, which is blessed with abundant natural resources.

The best political arguments are the ones voters inherently know are true. People see the impact of high prices on themselves. They don’t need political ads for Mr. Trump to tell them, and no number of Harris campaign ads will persuade them to ignore what they see. Higher prices on food, fuel, housing, electricity and other essentials are hurting the hardworking people of this country.

Life was better before President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. No amount of help from biased moderators from the corporate media can change that. Prices were lower when Mr. Trump was president. Our border was more secure, and the public was not as concerned about violent crime.

Ms. Harris is the Biden-Harris administration’s point person on finding the sources of illegal immigration. She has failed, and now we have a national security crisis on our southern border. Illegal drugs are crossing the border, and the surge of fentanyl coming north contributes to the historically high number of overdose deaths in our country.

The moderators from ABC News rhetorically fell over themselves to fact-check Mr. Trump in the debate but refused to pressure Ms. Harris regarding her failure to reduce illegal immigration. Listening to the vice president alone would make some people think that Mr. Trump is to blame for the troubles at the southern border. Efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to walk away from his successes have led to the problems we face today. Failing to secure the border and ensure public safety are more than just domestic issues; they are connected to America’s economic challenges.

Complaining about biased moderators and speculating that Ms. Harris had a device in her ear giving her the answers will not win the election. One thing will win this presidential election.

Mr. Trump needs to remind voters every day of what Ms. Harris failed to acknowledge in the debate: Americans were better off when Donald Trump was president, and they will be better off again when he is back in office.

• Scott Walker is president of Young America’s Foundation and served as the 45th governor of Wisconsin from 2011 to 2019.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/sep/12/trump-must-stay-on-message-to-win-in-november/

Nuvalent Published on ALK-selective inhibitor

  Nuvalent, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUVL), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on creating precisely targeted therapies for clinically proven kinase targets in cancer, today announced the publication of a manuscript in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, which describes the design and characterization of NVL-655 and details Nuvalent's approach to rationally targeting ALK. NVL-655 is currently being studied in the ongoing ALKOVE-1 Phase 1/2 clinical trial for patients with advanced ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and other solid tumors.

The manuscript, titled "NVL-655 is a selective and brain-penetrant inhibitor of diverse ALK mutant oncoproteins, including lorlatinib-resistant compound mutations," is published online and can be accessed here: https://aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscovery/article/doi/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-24-0231/748436/NVL-655-Is-a-Selective-and-Brain-Penetrant

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nuvalent-announces-publication-in-cancer-discovery-detailing-design-and-characterization-of-alk-selective-inhibitor-nvl-655-302247762.html