The spending package rushed to President Biden’s desk throws money at the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy and a massive expansion of the federal welfare state. Here’s what is included in the legislation:
• Direct checks of $1,400 for individuals earning up to $75,000 per year and couples earning up to $150,000 per year. The payments fully phase out for individuals making more than $80,000 per year and couples making more than $160,000 per year.
• $350 billion for states and localities.
• Extension of federal unemployment benefits, with $300 added to weekly jobless checks until Sept. 6.
• $10,200 tax exclusion for unemployment compensation for households earning less than $150,000 per year.
• More than $125 billion for K-12 schools.
• $86 billion for multi-employer pension plans.
• $60 billion for coronavirus testing and vaccine distribution and procurement.
• Extension of a 15% increase in SNAP benefits (food stamps) through September.
• More than $30 billion for transit agencies.
• $28.6 billion for restaurants through a new grant program.
• More than $21 billion in emergency rental assistance and more than $9 billion for mortgage and utility assistance.
• $15 billion for Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) grants for small businesses.
• $10 billion to expand domestic production of personal protective equipment, vaccines and medical supplies.
• Increase in the child tax credit from $2,000 to $3,000 and an increase to $3,600 for children under the age of 6.
• $39 billion for child care, including almost $24 billion for stabilization grants and nearly $15 billion for the child care and development block grant program.
• $35 billion for health insurance premium subsidies for people who buy health insurance on Obamacare exchanges. Waives the 400% federal poverty level cap on eligibility for the subsidies.
• $3.9 billion to increase availability of mental health and substance abuse treatment.
• $800 million to buy U.S.-grown food products for distribution to developing countries.
• $270 million for the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.
• $200 million for libraries through the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
• $200 million for “worker protection enforcement activities” through the Department of Labor.
• $175 million for public broadcasting.
• $100 million for air quality and pollution mitigation efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency.
• $50 million for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to combat consumer-product-related injury or death.
• $30.4 million for Federal Trade Commission efforts to combat COVID-19-related scams.
Source: Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s office
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services relaxed its recommendations for nursing home visits Wednesday after more than three million vaccine doses have been administered in nursing homes so far as part of a federal effort to successfully slow the spread of the virus at long-term care facilities.
Key Facts
Under the previous guidance released in September, nursing homes were encouraged to set up outdoor visits, and only allow indoor visitation if there weren’t any new cases in the facility in the past 14 days.
The updated guidance recommends that nursing homes allow indoor visits at all times, regardless of vaccination status, unless residents have been infected or are in quarantine.
There is one major exception: If a nursing home is located in a county with a positivity rate greater than 10% and if less than 70% of the facility is fully vaccinated, the agency says indoor visits should be prohibited.
Crucial Quote
“CMS recognizes the psychological, emotional and physical toll that prolonged isolation and separation from family have taken on nursing home residents, and their families,” said CMS Director Dr. Lee Fleisher said in a statement. “That is why, now that millions of vaccines have been administered to nursing home residents and staff, and the number of COVID cases in nursing homes has dropped significantly, CMS is updating its visitation guidance to bring more families together safely.”
Key Background
Since older people are at higher risk of serious illness from Covid-19, nursing homes have been particularly hit hard by the virus. According to CMS data, nursing home residents and staff have seen 1.2 million Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, resulting in 131,000 deaths. But infections have declined dramatically since December after the federal government enlisted Walgreens and CVS to administer vaccines in long-term care facilities. The week of December 20, nursing homes reported 33,625 cases. By the end of February, weekly cases were down to 1,927.
“There is no economic recovery without economic justice,” says California governor. Embattled California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) told his constituents that the state will never return “to normal” because that means going back to a state of “inequity.”
During a State of the State Address on Tuesday, Newsom slammed critics of his tyrannical lockdown policies and COVID restrictions, and vowed that things won’t ever go back to normal.
“When this pandemic ends – and it will end soon – we’re not going back to normal. Normal was never good enough. Normal accepts inequity,” said the Democrat governor.
“So, our journey back must also be a path to close inequities. There is no economic recovery without economic justice.”
This is just another example of Newsom moving the goalposts toward the Democrats’ totalitarian vision of America.
In May 2020, Newsom said California wouldn’t go “back to normal” until a vaccine is released.
“We’re not going back to normal,” said Newsom. “It’s a new normal with adaptations and modifications, until we get to immunity and a vaccine.”
So first California couldn’t return to normal until a vaccine was produced. Now California can’t go back to normal until they address “inequity” with “economic justice.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson succinctly explained the insidious difference between “equality” and “equity”, where the latter is meant to give even more power to the powerful.
“The first thing to know about equality is that it’s designed to challenge power. Equity, by contrast is designed to protect power,” Carlson said earlier this month. “Equity is what the British monarchy had, equality is what the American colonists wanted.”
Newsom is currently facing the prospects of a recall election as 1.9 million petition signatures have been reached, with only 1.4 million required to trigger a recall vote.
All the signatures must be submitted to county registrars by March 17, and officials say a recall election could be conducted by the end of summer.
Facebook on Wednesday asked a federal court to dismiss antitrust lawsuits brought by federal and state regulators, saying the suits failed to prove the company was a monopoly and harmed competition.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Facebook argued that it faced ample competition and that the Federal Trade Commission and 48 attorneys general from states and territories could not prove the company has harmed consumers.
“Antitrust laws are intended to promote competition and protect consumers,” Facebook said in a blog post. “These complaints do not credibly claim that our conduct harmed either.”
Facebook’s motion to the court is its first legal statement in what is expected to be a yearslong court battle over the power of the company and its future. Last December, the F.T.C. and attorneys general filed lawsuits claiming the company illegally built a monopoly through its mergers of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 and had since used its dominant power to suppress competition.
Letitia James, the New York attorney general, who led the states’ complaint, said that Facebook was wrong about the law.
“We are confident in our case, which is why almost every state in this nation has joined our bipartisan lawsuit to end Facebook’s illegal conduct,” she said in a statement.
The F.T.C. declined to comment.
The lawsuit is seen as a landmark case to rein in the power of Big Tech. The Justice Department and dozens of state attorneys general have also sued Google for allegedly abusing its monopoly in search and advertising. Together, the cases have set the stage of the biggest effort by government regulators to tame the power of tech giants since a lawsuit against Microsoft two decades ago.
Facebook will have a steep burden to prove the claims in the lawsuits are not valid to win a motion to dismiss the case. The F.T.C. and states are expected to respond in April.
Former President Donald Trump urged football legend Herschel Walker on Wednesday to run for the Senate from Georgia in 2022 against newly elected Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia?” Mr. Trump said in a press release that sounded like his tweets of old. “He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL. He is also a GREAT person. Run Herschel, run!”
There also has been talk in Trump circles of Mr. Walker running for governor in Georgia against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, a Trump foe. But Mr. Trump has warmed to the idea of the former University of Georgia football star campaigning for Senate instead.
Mr. Walker and the former president have known each other since 1983, when Mr. Trump signed him to play for the New Jersey Generals football team in the old United States Football League.
Mr. Walker went on to star for the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL, and he still lives in the Dallas area. But he maintains a business in Georgia.
Mr. Warnock’s victory in a runoff in January helped Democrats take control of the Senate.
Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire conservative commentator known best for his popular podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show,” is launching a new show called “Debunked,” Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Shapiro has made a brand for himself with his viral attempts to dissect left-wing arguments on his podcast. Now he’ll take that format to video, where he’ll air videos of left-wing figures making claims that he will confront.
Details: In a trailer for the new show seen by Axios, Shapiro says he will walk viewers through “all of the supporting research to debunk arguments made by the left, and expose every fallacy the left throws at you.”
Each week, Shapiro says he will try to debunk a common left-wing argument on the show in 15 minutes or less.
He will touch on a range of topics, from policing to minimum wage, using research to make his arguments.
The show will debut on Friday, exclusively to paid subscribers of the Daily Wire.
The company announced two weeks ago that it is developing a new movie with Gina Carano, the “Mandalorian” actress who was booted from the series after incendiary comments she made comparing political hate to anti-Semitism.
The pivot to subscriptions means that the company will need to make longer-term upfront investments in video shows, movies and documentaries to drive loyal subscribers.
While the company has said it wants to differentiate itself from other conservative subscription media brands by focusing mostly on entertainment, rather than political commentary, this show will be the exception to that rule.
Americans living in border states are not the only ones being harmed by the Biden administration’s border crisis — government officials in Mexico are feeling some pain, too, and they’re not happy about it.
What are the details?
Reuters reported Wednesday that Mexico’s government is concerned the Biden administration’s lenient approach to illegal immigration enforcement has both resulted in untenable levels of migration and created business for violent gangs and drug cartels.
According to internal assessments and intelligence gathering seen by the news agency, dangerous gangs are reportedly taking advantage of U.S. measures that “incentivize migration” by diversifying smuggling methods and winning over migrants as clients.
The Biden administration, intent on turning the page on former President Donald Trump’s tougher stance toward illegal immigration, has unwittingly created a full-blown crisis on the southern border since coming into power, as unprecedented numbers of migrants continue to surge into the U.S. in anticipation of being received with open arms.about:blank
“They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said of President Joe Biden during a recent meeting. “We need to work together to regulate the flow, because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”
What else?
One Mexican official who spoke anonymously said organized crime units altered their modus operandi “the day Biden took office” and now are exhibiting “unprecedented” levels of sophistication.
“That includes briefing clients on the latest immigration rules, using technology to outfox authorities, and disguising smuggling operations as travel agencies,” Reuters reported.
“Migrants have become a commodity,” the official said.
Cesar Peniche, attorney general of Chihuahua, the Mexican state that shares the largest stretch of border with the U.S., noted that the border surge has encouraged gangs to recruit migrants as drug mules and kidnap others for money.
Many of the migrants hoping to gain entry into the U.S. are not from Mexico, but rather travel through the country from places in Central and South America, or elsewhere around the world.
Anything else?
Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas) warned the Biden administration that its open borders leniency could end up emboldening drug cartels.
“You just can’t say, ‘Yeah, yeah, let everybody in’ — because then we’re affected down there at the border,” Cuellar told Axios.
Administrators at a school near Dallas say students in their district are excelling academically – and it’s likely because they never imposed lockdowns or shut down schools.
Officials at the Peaster Independent School District in Parker County say they never required masks, socially distanced students or canceled events.
“No one has been placed into a mandatory quarantine,” reports CBS DFW.
“Homecoming happened on schedule.”
“The pancake dinner, fall festival, sports and concerts all took place as planned.”
When Gov. Greg Abbott recently rescinded a statewide mask ordinance, the district didn’t send out an email to parents – because masks at the school were voluntary.
The weird social experiment of normality has led to higher enrollment and daily attendance, with students actually passing on to the next grade, as opposed to failing due to “distance learning.”
“Our kids have thrived and our teachers have thrived,” said Superintendent Lance Johnson. “And it’s just been real eye opening to see how we’ve done things different than other schools.”
Johnson says after initially trying out distance learning, parents were polled and an overwhelming 86% favored a school model closest to the traditional model.
“Our teachers and our school board and our community just stood in solidarity to say you know what, we’re going to do what’s best for kids,” Johnson told CBS DFW. “And what’s best for kids is having them in school, learning, in a traditional school model.”
When school returned last fall, it started on time in August, there was no Covid outbreak, and kids not wearing masks weren’t questioned or harassed.
“Anyone who did not [wear a mask], was assumed to be exercising an allowed medical or religious exemption,” CBS DFW notes.
Likewise, teachers have merely had about a dozen absences more than the same period in 2019.
The district kept its approach despite being pressured by the media, parents and the Texas Education Agency, which filed a complaint last July.
“The Weatherford Democrat reported in October the agency reviewed the complaint and took no action on it,” reports CBS DFW.
While many criticize the district’s dismissal of the Covid-19 threat, Superintendent Johnson says you can’t argue with results.
“18 months ago what we’re doing to kids would’ve been criminal,” he said. “And here we are fighting going back to that model, fighting letting kids be kids, and letting kids socialize and letting them have a normal school year.”
Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stand to profit handsomely from their investments in drug companies researching solutions for the pandemic. Some say that raises critical questions around conflicts of interest, transparency and accountability.
An increasingly clear feature of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the public health response is being driven not only by governments and multilateral institutions, such as the World Health Organisation, but also by a welter of public-private partnerships involving drug companies and private foundations.
One leading voice to emerge is the Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s top funders of health research, whose sprawling charitable activities in the pandemic include co-leading a WHO programme to support new COVID-19 therapeutics. The Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator project hopes to raise billions of dollars and deliver hundreds of millions of treatment courses in the year ahead, including dexamethasone and a number of monoclonal antibodies.
At the same time, The BMJ finds, Wellcome itself holds investments in companies producing these same treatments. Financial disclosures from late 2020 show that Wellcome has a £275m (€318m; $389m) stake in Novartis, which manufactures dexamethasone and is investigating additional therapeutics. And Roche, in which Wellcome holds a £252m stake, is helping to manufacture monoclonal antibodies with Regeneron. Both Roche and Novartis report having had conversations with WHO’s ACT Accelerator about their therapeutic drugs.
Wellcome’s financial interests have been published on the trust’s website and through financial regulatory filings but do not seem to have been disclosed as financial conflicts of interest in the context of Wellcome’s work on COVID-19, even as they show that the trust is positioned to potentially gain from the pandemic financially.
Revelations of the Wellcome Trust’s financial conflicts of interest follow news reports that another charity, the Gates Foundation, is also positioned to potentially benefit financially from its leading role in the pandemic response. An investigation by the Nation revealed that Gates had more than $250m (£179m; €206m) invested in companies working on COVID-19 and cited civil society groups expressing alarm with the outsize influence the billionaire charity wields in the pandemic response, which they see as elevating the role of the drug industry.
Yet charities such as Gates and Wellcome — and even drug companies — have generally been praised in the news media during the pandemic for their efforts to solve the public health crisis, with relatively little attention paid to their financial interests and with few checks and balances put on their work.
“What the pandemic is doing is buffing the reputation of organisations like Gates and Wellcome and the drug companies, when I don’t think they really deserve that buffing up,” says Joel Lexchin, professor emeritus of York University’s school of health policy and management in Toronto. “I think they’re acting the way they always have, which is, from the drug companies’ point of view, looking after their own financial interests, and from the point of view of the foundations is pursuing their own privately developed objectives without being responsible to anybody but their own boards of directors.”
Conflict of interest?
Mohga Kamal-Yanni, a policy adviser to UNAIDS and other organisations who recently co-wrote a paper citing problems with the Gates Foundation’s influence in the pandemic, says that Wellcome’s investments raise critical questions around transparency and accountability.
“In COVID, these two words have such a huge meaning because we need to know that decisions are being made based on evidence and science,” she tells The BMJ. “Do we know which companies they are talking to? How they make the decisions about funding a particular company — or this product or that one?”
The Wellcome Trust disputes that its investments compromise — or conflict with — its independence. “We are not aware of any situation in our relations with . . . the ACT Accelerator in which a conflict has arisen as a result of our investment portfolio, or in which it would have been necessary for Wellcome representatives to recuse themselves,” a spokesperson said, declining to comment on its investments in Novartis or Roche. “We would never make decisions or advise others about the pandemic response for a reason other than public health.”
Wellcome’s supporters describe the deep well of biomedical expertise the charity brings to the pandemic, prominently from its director, Jeremy Farrar, a famed infectious disease researcher who is credited with playing leading roles in previous outbreaks of Ebola and avian influenza.
Kenny Baillie, a research group leader in the department of genetics and genomics at the University of Edinburgh who has received research funding from Wellcome, says that the charity also deserves credit as a “beacon of probity and good governance.”
He explains, “I certainly can speak to my personal experience interacting with the science side, and there’s been no attempt to influence me or any other researcher I know from doing the best science to benefit humanity.” Yet it is still not clear what governance structures are in place to guarantee that Wellcome’s vast endowment does not influence its agenda setting role through WHO or its other work in the pandemic.
Unitaid, which co-leads the WHO ACT Accelerator project, says that it has a “clear mutual understanding” with Wellcome “that relevant institutional interests will be transparently disclosed.” But, Unitaid told The BMJ last December, “We have not received any declaration of conflict of interest.”
Marc Rodwin, professor of law at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts, says that institutions with financial conflicts of interest can still make valuable contributions to the pandemic response but should not be in a position of influence or decision making.
“I’d go back further than just saying they should recuse themselves from particular decisions. Why are they being chosen in the first place to be in these positions [of authority]?” he asks. “I like the concept of epidemiological risk factor here — it’s just introducing a level of risk that is unnecessary. When there’s a lot of money going around, you don’t want to have those kinds of financial conflicts that can sway those decisions.”
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — During a KUTV investigation into COVID-19 vaccine side effects and where to report them, we found four reported deaths, filed by Utah families and their caregivers to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System.
One case stood out, a 39-year-old single mom from Ogden who died four days after her second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Her family, who is now waiting on an autopsy, held a celebration of life for her this past weekend.
Kassidi Kurill by all accounts was healthy, happy and “had more energy” than just about anyone else around her. Her family told 2News she had no known health problems or pre-existing conditions.
Kassidi Kurill’s Story
I didn’t really cry when my dad died, I cry a lot for her.
Alfred Hawley, a retired Hill Air Force Base fighter pilot, is a military man who has known risk and loss his entire life. He’s taken it all in stride, until now.
An hour before his daughter’s celebration of life this past Saturday, he sat down to talk about his baby girl, the one who always wore makeup to cover up the freckles he loved so much.
With tears in his eyes, Alfred said “I’m at a state in my life where I’m ok with that (emotion)” as he wiped a tear from his cheek; not the first and not the last.
“She was the one who promised to take care of me” he said.
The death of his youngest daughter came out of nowhere in a year where this family has already suffered unimaginable grief with three funerals before Kassidi in the past 370 days.
Four days after Kassidi’s second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, she was gone. Dead before most of her family could say their goodbyes.
“She came in early and said her heart was racing and she felt like she need to get to the emergency room.” Alfred woke up that Thursday morning to his daughter asking for help.
Kassidi and her 9-year-old daughter Emilia lived with her parents. They’d been one family under the same roof since Emilia was born. Mom and Dad, grandma and grandpa always close by when they were needed.
Alfred, now retired, spent a lot of time with his girls. Kassidi, he says, “got sick right away, soreness at the shot location then started getting sick then started complaining that she was drinking lots of fluids but couldn’t pee and then felt a little better the next day.”
It was her second shot; the first came with a sore arm but no real side effects or issues. Kassidi was the first in the family to get the vaccine. She was a surgical tech for several local plastic surgeons, and the vaccine was a part of the job. She stepped up to get the shot, her family says, without hesitation.
She was absolutely fine with getting it, in fact she told all of us- it’s fine you guys should all get it.
Kassidi’s older sister Kristin, often confused as her twin, lives in Arizona. The distance didn’t matter much, they visited often and talked on the phone every day.
The day her sister got the second COVID-19 shot was a normal one from their conversations throughout the day. “They had gone shopping, she was fine then started feeling not so great that evening.”
Kristin said they were not worried about Kassidi because “everyone from her work had flu like symptoms -so we thought that was normal.” The kind of thing you had to sweat out for a couple days.
Kassidi got the second shot on Monday, Feb. 1. While she was in bed all day Tuesday and Wednesday, it wasn’t until Thursday morning she knew something was wrong. She woke up early, got ready and asked her dad to driver her to the local ER, where they arrived by 7 a.m.
As soon as they walked in the door, Kassidi was throwing up. Minutes later, questions were raised about what was making her so sick.
Kassidi with her daughter.
Her dad recalls doctors asking question after question, “Is there any explanation?”
He answered saying, “She just had the shot, they did a blood test and immediately came back and said she was very-very sick, and her liver was not functioning.”
Kristin, still in Arizona, knew her sister had gone to the hospital but the speed of what was happening was “so unexpected.” She was thinking Kassidi would get an IV with fluids and be back home in an hour.
Alfred, who was at the ER with his daughter knew they were not going home any time soon.
“It was a total shock and I was even afraid to tell my wife” he recalled. It was a call he did not want to make.
Kassidi was flown to Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, a trauma center where they had the ability to do transplants if needed. Her liver was failing and a transplant, doctors believed, was her best option at survival.
That’s when Kristin got the call her sister was being transferred. She jumped on the first flight to Utah, but when she landed, she was not allowed in the hospital because of COVID-19 protocols. She waited with Kassidi’s daughter Emilia, hoping for a miracle.
Both of Kassidi’s parents volunteered to donate a portion of their liver, they knew if they were not a match, they could be part of a trade where someone else who was a match could help their daughter.
They never got the chance to offer the lifesaving gift. Doctors at Intermountain were doing everything they could to get Kassidi stable, but nothing seemed to work. Alfred said his daughter’s liver, kidney and heart shut down.
Alfred, who was with his daughter when she passed, said it didn’t make any sense.
She was healthy – happy and active. The greatest mom you ever saw in your life and then she was so sick that in less than 12 hours intubated and on life support
She passed, he said, 30 hours after they arrived in the emergency room.
An autopsy was recommended by doctors at Intermountain and the family agreed. Kurill’s body was moved to the Utah State Medical Examiner in Taylorsville where a full autopsy was performed.
The State Medical Examiner’s office cannot comment on the case because of privacy laws but spoke to KUTV about when an autopsy would provide answers to a family reporting a death post vaccine.
Dr. Erik Christensen, Utah’s chief Medical Examiner, said proving vaccine injury as a cause of death almost never happens.
“Did the vaccine cause this? I think that would be very hard to demonstrate in autopsy,” he said.
Erik can think of only one instance where you would see a vaccine as the cause of death on an official autopsy report and that would be in an immediate case of Anaphylaxis. One where a person received the vaccine and died almost instantaneously.
“Short of that” he said, “it would be difficult for us to definitively say this is the vaccine.”
A more likely result, would be a lack of answers or an “incomplete autopsy.”
The autopsy, he said, can provide answers to a family when no disease or red flags or found. As Erik explained, “that we don’t see a competing cause of death.” That lack of answers may help them understand if the vaccine was a possible cause.
An autopsy could also identify a cause of death the family was unaware of where doctors find undiagnosed pneumonia, cancer or an unknown heart condition. Erik said there are many people, even young people, walking around with major health issues they simply don’t know about.
Kassidi, according to her family, had no known medical conditions. Her past medical records will likely be used in her death investigation that could take as long as three months depending on what initial reports and toxicology reports show.
Kassidi’s family is hopeful they will have answers, but know the reality that they may never know for sure what claimed their daughter and sisters life.
Kristin said when she looks back, Kassidi “was fine the day she got the shot and then everything changed.”
Her father agrees, saying Kassidi was “healthy and good- then she took the shot.” He points to “Occom’s Razor where the simplest answer is mostly likely correct.”
Until he gets other data, Alfred “must believe there was something with the shot.”
Kassidi’s death will leave a major void; her 9-year-old daughter will continue living with her grandparents. Her father, a civil servant and member of the National Guard, travels for work and has served several tours overseas.
Her family has set up a Memorial Account in Kassidi Kurill’s name:
Emilia, or “Millie” as her family calls her, was the one who wanted her mom’s story told. She’s been forced to grow up a lot in the four weeks since her mother’s passing.
She’s watched her grandpa decide to get his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Millie was begging me not to” Alfred said. It wasn’t an easy decision. He’d had his first shot not long after his daughter.
“There’s always risk” he said.
You can’t make that go away, we take risk everyday all day long. You just have to decide -does it make sense?
For him “as a 69-year-old diabetic it made sense to take the second shot and get 95% immunity.” After a long pause, he said that “if you are young maybe it doesn’t make sense.” Ultimately “you will have to make your own decision.”
In Utah, Kassidi is just one of four reported vaccine deaths. Three other reported deaths are in Utahns all in their 80s. With information available it does not appear autopsies were ordered in their cases.
Erik notes vaccine deaths are possible and do happen.
“Just about every vaccine or anything you do treat someone, when you inject something has a potential for a negative outcome. I’m sure VAERS can verify other vaccines have led to death.” The deaths he said are “vanishingly rare compared to the lives they save.”
Currently 1,637 families or caregivers have reported deaths they believe could be related to the vaccine to VAERS. The CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.
The Centers for Disease Control currently says there are no deaths attributed to COVID-19 vaccines.
“Over 92 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through March 8, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 1,637 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA physicians review each case report of death as soon as notified and CDC requests medical records to further assess reports. A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths. CDC and FDA will continue to investigate reports of adverse events, including deaths, reported to VAERS.,” CDC reported on its website.
KUTV will follow up with the family when the autopsy report has been completed. In the state of Utah, those reports are not public and can only be viewed when the family chooses to share that information. The Medical Examiner, because of HIPPA, could not say whether the autopsy would be automatically forwarded to the CDC and the FDA.
