A Generous Gesture That Should Embarrass The Democrats

It's pretty sad when a generous private citizen wants to do more for Americans than the Democrats are doing. You would think that this offer would shame the obstructionists into stopping their latest government shutdown and fund the Department of Homeland Security. You would think that -- but you'd be wrong. While our TSA agents quit because they can't afford to work without pay, the Dems' priority continues to be illegal aliens, criminals, and our enemies, and those people could not be happier about it.

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Elon Musk wants to pay TSA salaries during partial government shutdown 

From USA Today, 3-21-26 

"Elon Musk said in a post on social media that he wants to pay the salaries of Transportation Security Administration employees who are working without paychecks during the partial government shutdown and as spring break travel ramps up.

"About 50,000 TSA officers aren't being paid as the shutdown stretches on for over a month, affecting funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Security lines at airports around the country have become chaotic, stretching outside terminals at some airports. Some TSA workers have not shown up to work, and officials have warned smaller airports could close if the situation drags on much longer.

"I would like to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country," Musk said in a post on X the morning of March 21.

"It is unclear whether there is a legal pathway for a donor to pay government salaries. USA TODAY has reached out to the Office of Management and Budget for comment."

Melanie Phillips on Iran: Civilization vs Barbarism - 3-20-26

Here's the great Melanie Phillips' latest column.

If you don't know by now, "Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. Her work is essential for all who care about creating a more rational, fair and compassionate world. Follow her journey wherever the evidence leads."  She's such a relief after you've seen the disgraceful pro-Iran coverage by the American media.

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Wimps and warriors. The Iran war is clarifying who is for civilisation against barbarism — and who is not
Melanie Phillips, Mar 20, 2026

"The war against Iran is having a most clarifying effect. It’s shining a light on those who are prepared to stand with civilisation against barbarism and flushing out those who are not.

"The usual suspects — those who hate Israel, despise America and stick pins into effigies of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — are willing Iran to win, or more to the point, willing Trump and Netanyahu to lose.

"Those who get news of the war only from mainstream media outlets in America and Britain have little idea of what’s actually happening.

"Many have no idea that throughout the years, hundreds of American soldiers were killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq and in repeated terrorist attacks on U.S. bases. They are ignorant of the thousands of missiles amassed by Hezbollah, which is currently firing hundreds of them at Israeli citizens from Lebanon every day.

"All they know from media outlets like The New York Times or the BBC is that the war was always going to be a disaster, it’s becoming a quagmire, it’s going to destroy the world’s economy, Trump is incompetent, he hasn’t got a strategy, and Iran is winning.

"In an article on Unherd, Sohrab Ahmari has complained that Trump betrayed his promise as a “war-weary populist” to become “a chaos agent,” failing to display a proper “aversion to wanton bloodshed and destruction”.

"To characterise this war as “wanton bloodshed and destruction” is not only wantonly to dismiss Iran’s bloody record and the mortal threat it has increasingly posed to America, Israel and the West. It also grossly misrepresents as “chaos” the astoundingly precise, targeted, steady destruction of Iran’s entire military machine and apparatus of internal repression.

"By the start of this week, Iranian ballistic-missile and drone launches had fallen by more than 90 per cent and 75 per cent respectively.

"Much of Iran’s regular navy is lying at the bottom of the sea, while its fast-attack craft, midget submarines and mine-laying capabilities are being liquidated. Its air defenses have been largely obliterated so that America’s non-stealth B-1 bombers are generally flying unimpeded over Iranian airspace.

"Yes, Iran’s extortion racket in the Straits of Hormuz is causing a major problem. But that can be addressed by eliminating Iran’s ability to hit shipping.

"And if the regime is totally defanged in accordance with the aims of this war, the oil weapon at this infamous maritime choke-point won’t be used ever again — a hitherto unthinkable boon that would be very much worth the short-term pain.

"As for Tehran’s gambit of bombing the Gulf states to make them pressurise Trump to end the war, that’s spectacularly blown up in its face. The Gulfies are so appalled by the Iranian attacks that they are putting huge pressure on Trump to finish the job of bringing the regime down.

"None of this is to be at all Pollyanna-ish about the war. This week, Israel was still being barraged by missiles, including illegal cluster munitions, as a result of which Iran succeeded in murdering at least two Israelis and four West Bank Arabs. And obviously, there’s no telling how this war will end.

"But it has demonstrated with savage clarity the cowardice of Britain and Europe, which have refused to join this fight against one of the great evils of the world. Trump’s blunt language may not be to everyone’s taste, but he is entirely correct to be furious at their response.

"Iran is a menace not just to Israel and America, but to Europe and the rest of the world. As the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, it has left a bloody trail of innocent victims and has been poised to achieve a nuclear-weapons arsenal.

"Yet Starmer has repeatedly and wrongly declared that the war is illegal under international law, a claim repeated by the Europeans. The European Union’s chief foreign-policy officer, Kaja Kallas, stated: “Iran is not our war.”

"But Britain and Europe, which won’t lift a finger to fight this threat to civilisation, rely parasitically on the United States to defend them against all such dangers.

"Britain was once a byword for martial grit, loyalty to allies and a bloody-minded refusal to kowtow to tyranny. Trump, who has sentimental ties to Britain, rightly declared that Starmer is “no Winston Churchill”.

"But the problem isn’t just that Keir Starmer, a fanatical zealot for international law, is unfortunately Britain’s current prime minister. Deeper trends have made Britain increasingly irrelevant on the world stage. Its refusal to join the war has camouflaged the embarrassing truth that it doesn’t have warships to send. For decades, it has been steadily emasculating its defenses to feed the voracious and limitless welfare state.

"At the same time, Britain has been genuflecting to its increasingly assertive and politically powerful Muslim community, giving into its demands that British society adapts to Islamic precepts in accordance with the Islamist agenda of infiltrating, intimidating and conquering the West. The country is unable to defend itself because it no longer even acknowledges its own historic identity.

"However, America, which has been gazing in dismay at the sad decline of the mothership of liberty across the Atlantic, has been having its own clarifying moment during this war.

"Joe Kent just resigned as director of the US National Counterterrorism Centre in protest against the war. He falsely claimed that Washington attacked Iran “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

"Not only did he further claim that Israel had drawn America into the 2003 Iraq war, even though Israel had actually warned the United States against that campaign. He also claimed that his wife had died “in a war manufactured by Israel,” whereas in fact she had been murdered in 2019 by an Islamic State suicide bomber in America’s war to destroy ISIS.

"In other words, Kent outed himself as a profound antisemite — in keeping with his association with the poisonous, Jew-hating MAGA faction led by Tucker Carlson.

"It’s a relief that Trump has finally started to speak against this faction. However, US Vice President JD Vance has once again dodged the elephant in the room.

"Speaking about Kent’s resignation, Vance said it was fine to disagree, but those working for the Trump administration had to go along with whatever the president decided to do. So it was right for Kent to resign.

"This was a wholly inadequate response. What Vance should have said was that Kent’s comments were antisemitic and totally unacceptable, whether made by someone in or out of government office.

"Just as he had previously done with antisemitic comments made by Carlson and the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, Vance was again presenting the “big tent” approach for welcoming disagreement over different opinions.

"But Jew-hatred can never be acceptable as a mere difference of opinion. It is utterly unacceptable and should be given no house-room in a tent of any size.

"If Trump and Vance don’t clearly repudiate and shun the Carlson faction, the Republican Party will be damaged. As a result, America may be thrown to the wolves of a Democratic party in thrall to anti-American, anti-West, anti-white racists, Islamists, antisemites and other cultish ideologues.

"The war has now brought this internal threat out into the open. We can all see from Kent’s words that this poison has infected the heart of the Trump administration.

"Defeating Iran will transform the whole world for the better and lead to new alliances that support rather than menace civilisation.

"If America doesn’t see this through, however, and the butchers of Tehran survive to fight another day, the United States will be catastrophically weakened, and the axis of evil comprising Russia, China and North Korea will accordingly be immeasurably strengthened.

"In other words, Trump is playing double or quits — and the hearts of the rest of us are in our mouths.

"In America, the war is sorting out the wimps from the warriors, realists from the fantasists and people of integrity from the morally depraved. But for Britain and Europe, the war is increasingly demonstrating that they are simply over."

Jewish News Syndicate

Some Thoughts About Iran's and Democrats' Shutdowns

This morning, while watching the news, I thought that the Strait of Hormuz being kept closed by Iran is an analogy for the Democrats and their DHS shutdown. 

Both selfish acts are inconveniencing everyone else. The price of oil and gas has gone up while Iran publicly executes a teenaged wrestling hero and others. The TSA is still working without being paid, but the Democrats are still getting their paychecks. The liberals call Trump a tyrant while Iran kills 40,000 of their own people and represses the rest into silence. The liberal American media keeps painting Trump as evil and won't cover the great progress our military has made. The moronic Dems think that "F--- Trump" is a good campaign slogan, and of course they're blaming our great ally Israel for this war,

I think we should send the Democrats to Iran so they can see exactly what tyranny and oppression really are.

Meanwhile, we should be grateful that the UAE will be helping us reopen the Strait. War does make strange bedfellows. That's more than I can say for England.

Your Local Epidemiologist 3-19-26: COVID, 6 Years Later

Covid-19 six years later

Katelyn Jetelina, Mar 19, 2026

Six years ago today, I put my baby in a camping carrier, strapped her on, opened my laptop on my dining room table, and started typing as fast as I could. I couldn’t believe how little communication existed that was timely, understandable, and actionable, with the humility and honesty the public deserved. So I tried to fill that gap, bringing my fellow faculty, staff, and students along for the Covid-19 journey in real time, signing every email the same way: Love, Your Local Epidemiologist. I told my husband I would only have to do this for six weeks. Surely someone would fill this gap… The rest is a blur (with many lessons learned along the way.)

March 22, 2020 during the lockdown. Strapped the baby in order to work from home. The start of YLE.

A lot has changed since then. I don’t do many deep dives on Covid-19 anymore because the landscape has dramatically changed for the better, but also because, honestly, it brings back some overwhelming emotions. But this anniversary matters not only so you can protect yourself from this virus that is still circulating, and not only to honor the 1.5 million people who died, but also because this moment deserves serious reflection.

So, six years later, this is where we stand.

A lot has changed, and continues to do so.

Covid-19 is no longer the third leading cause of death. In fact, it now carries roughly the same severity as the flu. While flu is nothing to brush off, this virus not being a top killer is genuine relief.

Data from CDC; Annotated by Your Local Epidemiologist.

Even better news: Peaks are getting smaller and smaller. Each successive wave has been lower than the last, a pattern reflected in almost every metric, including hospitalizations (see below). This isn’t surprising: as our collective immunity builds, the virus has a harder time breaking through. SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve along the same narrow path, which is unusual but very helpful in reducing the number of people with the disease. The Covid-19 cousins we call coronaviruses are now responsible for the common cold, and there’s a hypothesis that this virus may eventually follow the same path. We are clearly not there yet, as hospitalization rates tell us, but the trajectory is meaningful.

Covid-19 Hospitalizations per 100,000. Source: CDC; Annotated by Your Local Epidemiologist.

Interestingly, seasonality has recently shifted. We now reliably see two waves each year: one in winter, one in summer. But nationally over the past two years, the summer wave has been larger than the winter wave (see above). We don’t know why.

Unfortunately, vaccination rates continue to fall. Roughly 3.5 million fewer older Americans were vaccinated this year compared to last year. That means 3.5 million people in the highest-risk group are now less protected from a largely preventable disease. With all the federal vaccine confusion, I expect this to continue to decline.

Some patterns haven’t changed, though.

For example, those most at risk for severe disease remain the same:

• Adults over 65 and infants under one year old continue to be the most likely to be hospitalized.

• The vast majority (80%) of hospitalizations are still for Covid-19, not incidentally with it.

• Risk increases with the number of chronic conditions a person has.

• Long Covid (physical symptoms persisting weeks or months after infection) is also still a risk.

Also, the vaccines continue to provide additional protection—about 50% against emergency room visits and hospitalization. Protection does still wane, dropping to roughly 18% at around four months. The decline is slower than before, particularly for hospitalization among adults aged 65 and older.

Data: CDC; Annotated by Your Local Epidemiologist.

There’s still a lot we don’t know.

It’s striking how much remains unknown about this virus six years in.

Long Covid is still poorly understood, with millions of people living with fatigue, cognitive impairment, and cardiovascular effects that medicine is only slowly grappling with. We know risk has decreased alongside the decline in severe acute disease, but we still lack reliable data on the extent of that decline, and we still have no effective treatments.

Vaccine dosing for older adults is another gap. Current guidance recommends two updated vaccine doses per year for older adults: one in the fall and one in the spring. But robust data on whether two annual doses offer better protection than one is still extremely limited. In fact, I couldn’t find any data that are actually useful for guiding people, like my grandfather, to make evidence-based decisions about getting a second dose and when. (I’m still telling him to get two doses because the benefits outweigh the risks, but man, we need evidence.)

We also still don’t have a clear, honest accounting of which interventions worked, which didn’t, and why during the biggest health emergency this country has faced in more than 100 years. For example, we still don’t know what works best to slow the spread of Covid-19. This is mind-boggling, given all we sacrificed as a society, let alone indicating how ill-prepared we are for next time.

Today, what worries me most is deeper than the science.

When researchers compared countries that fared well during Covid-19 to those that didn’t, they looked at health care infrastructure, population density, universal health care, age distribution, how many vaccines they got, and a ton of other factors. But the strongest predictors of Covid-19 infections weren’t any of these. It was trust: trust in government, trust in institutions, trust in each other. Countries where people broadly believed their neighbors and leaders were acting in good faith did measurably better. The United States ranked among the lowest among high-income countries.

Six years later, it’s getting worse.

Federal leadership has promised to restore trust. But the latest data show record-low levels of trust in government overall, and specifically in health agencies; trust is eroding further day by day. Lack of transparency, full-on destruction of systems and capabilities, partisan attacks, lack of accountability, performative acts without real change, and a failure to listen to the public are all contributing to it.

First graph source: Pew; Second graph source: Annenberg Public Policy Institute

Public health, on the outside, though, isn’t providing an alternative path forward either. Many institutions and leaders are stuck in defense mode, circling the wagons to preserve the status quo, or paralyzed, afraid to take even one step forward. Wishing we could return to 2019 is not a plan. Public health systems saved many people, but they also failed many.

I’m finally starting to see some appetite for change peppered here and there, and it’s giving me hope that things might improve, but not at the pace that meets the urgency of the moment.

The health of Americans and biosecurity depend on it.

Bottom line

Six years! Six years with a complicated data story of real progress alongside real stubbornness. This anniversary is striking to me for two reasons. The first is the virus itself: it continues to surprise us, and we remain humbled by how much we still don’t understand. The second is what has happened to us in its wake.

Six years ago, I sat down at my dining room table because I deeply believed things needed to be done differently. I still believe that today. The question now is whether this country has the wherewithal to do it. I think we do (we need to), but it’s going to take all of us.

Love, YLE

P.S. A lot of you have Covid-19-related questions. My team pulled the top 7. Here are some answers for you!

1. What do we know about long Covid in 2026? The risk of developing long Covid has decreased significantly compared to early pandemic years, but it’s not zero. Millions are still living with it, and we still have no proven treatments. Here is YLE’s last dive into long Covid.

2. Will we still be able to get updated vaccines this fall? This is uncertain in a way it has never been before. The federal government’s vaccine policy is highly unstable.

3. Are home rapid tests still reliable? Yes, but timing still matters. Tests are most accurate a few days into symptoms, not at the first sign of illness. So, a negative on day one is not a green light. Test again 24 to 48 hours later for a clearer picture. There are no longer free Covid-19 tests through the government, but you can get one at a pharmacy or online.

4. Where do I find trustworthy data now? I still trust the CDC data (for these reasons), and they have a great respiratory dashboard that is updated weekly here. I don’t trust CDC’s guidance around vaccines from the past year.

5. How much damage does Covid do to the heart, brain, and vascular system? Covid infection is associated with an elevated risk of heart attack, stroke, blood clots, and cognitive decline, even after mild cases. The elevated risk appears to diminish over time for most people, and vaccination reduces the likelihood of these outcomes.

6. Who should take Paxlovid, and is it still effective? Paxlovid remains effective at reducing the risk of severe disease, particularly for people over 65 and those with underlying conditions. (It may also reduce the risk of long Covid, though if it does, the effect is probably small.) The $800 out-of-pocket cost for Medicare patients is a serious, largely unaddressed barrier that keeps it from those who need it most. Metformin has shown some promise in preventing long Covid, but the benefit for vaccinated people is less clear, probably because the vaccines already reduce the risk so much that it’s hard to see additional benefit on top of them.

7. When are we getting a vaccine that prevents infection, not just severity? This is a complicated question, and scientists are still working on it. Right now, many researchers are excited about nasal spray vaccines. The idea is that if you can build up immunity right in your nose and throat (where the virus first enters), your body might be able to stop the infection before it even starts. But there are a few catches. If you’ve already had Covid-19, getting a regular vaccine already sends immune cells to your nose anyway, so a nasal vaccine might be less of a leap forward than we hope. On top of that, it likely wouldn’t protect you for long and would still require regular boosters as the virus mutates. The good news is that nasal and mucosal vaccines are being developed right now, and early results look promising. Scientists are also working on a universal coronavirus vaccine that could protect against many variants at once, but that’s a longer-term goal. The bottom line: better vaccines are coming, but a widely available next-generation option is probably still a few years away.

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Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE reaches over 320,000 people in over 132 countries with one goal: “Translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below:

Melanie Phillips on The Self-Destruction of Great Britain

It's maddening and sad to see this once great country destroy itself because of political correctness, illegal immigration, and weak leaders.

Read this column and see how familiar it sounds. Thank goodness America's not quite this bad...yet. But if the Democrats win the White House in 2028, things will get very bad very quickly.

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Why the nation of Churchill is no more.  A former diplomat blows the whistle on anti-Israel bias and Islamist entryism
Melanie Phillips, Mar 18, 2026

"The “special relationship” between Britain and America is currently on life support. US President Donald Trump is furious with the British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, for refusing to join the US and Israel in the war against Iran.

"He is furious with others in the west too for similarly refusing even to help defend the Straits of Hormuz, the “chokehold” waterway which the Iranian regime is currently threatening to attack. As a result, traffic through the Straits has dwindled to a handful of tankers and the price of oil has soared.

"As Trump has pointed out, the refusal of Britain, Europe and others to help defend the Straits is particularly egregious since they are vastly more dependent on the oil coming through there than is America.

"They are refusing not just because they are pusillanimous appeasers who will never themselves lift a finger to confront tyranny and are all too happy to rely parasitically on the US to defend their interests.

"That behaviour is disgraceful enough. Far worse is their objection to the war itself, taking refuge behind a perverse denial of the 47-year war waged by Iran against America, Israel and the west to declare falsely that the current war is an illegal act of aggression under international law.

"And behind that bubbles an unsavoury stew of disgust and fear of Trump’s moral clarity over Iran (yes, you read that right); venomous hostility to Israel founded in the destruction of their own moral compass; and the disintegration of their sense of national identity and purpose and ability to acknowledge, let alone defend themselves against, predatory foes both from within and without and who need to be fought.

"This is the context within which to understand the pathetic spectacle of Starmer shaming and betraying his country. He has totally collapsed the Labour party’s last vestige of its historic claim — which Starmer himself made, when he was purporting to fight the party’s exploding Jew-hatred under the previous leadership of Jeremy Corbyn — that “the Labour party is a moral project or it is nothing”.

"Well, now we can see it is indeed nothing. Starmer and his party have refused to take part in the heroic, desperate and courageous attempt finally to rid the world of a very great evil, the Islamic regime of Iran.

"Those fanatics are up to their necks in the blood of their own people as well as that of American and British soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere. Through their proxies, they’ve made countless innocents into victims of the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, and have slaughtered equally countless Israelis and Jews who they intend to wipe off the map altogether.

"This terrible regime has not only destabilised other countries in the region; it has not only presided over a global drugs trade that has funded its genocidal murder machine by turning untold numbers in the west into lethally addicted zombies; but it also squats at the centre of the global axis of evil comprising Russia, China and North Korea which it has provided with fuel, armaments and a centre of economic and geopolitical gravity.

"If the civilised world is ever to be freed from this lethal constriction that has been relentlessly suffocating the life out of it, the head of the snake must be severed. Yet Britain, the once lion-hearted nation that under Winston Churchill saved the free world and whose greatest exports have been political freedom, military excellence and cricket, has turned its back on this vital and desperate endeavour.

"It has also demonised and punished Israel for defending itself against the regime’s murderous attacks — through promoting the exterminatory Palestinian cause, pushing Hamas propaganda lies, and supporting lawfare witch-hunts and military boycotts against the Jewish state — while fawning over the tyrants of Tehran.

"Shortly before the war, just weeks after the Iranian regime massacred thousands of its own people protesting at its tyranny — with the streets of Tehran reportedly running red with the blood of those who were ruthlessly gunned down by the regime’s security goons — staff of Britain’s Foreign Office actually attended a party at the Iranian embassy in London to celebrate the revolution that had brought these monsters to power in 1979.

"The Telegraph reported:

"As smartly dressed guests, including UK civil servants, gathered at the London event, embassy officials hailed Iran’s “remarkable accomplishments” in spite of “unjust” Western sanctions. Video footage shows attendees standing in silence for a rendition of Iran’s national anthem…

"Seyed Ali Mousavi, Iran’s ambassador to the UK, gave a speech praising the Iranian regime and attacking Western sanctions on Tehran. “For nearly half a century, Iran has faced relentless pressure; from the eight-year imposed war and severe sanctions to acts of sabotage and terrorism,” he said.“Nevertheless, by relying on domestic capabilities, national cohesion and empowered human resources, it has achieved significant progress.” …

"A large banner can be seen adorned with pictures of Ali Khamenei, the former Iranian supreme leader who was later killed by US-Israeli strikes, and Ruhollah Khomeini, his predecessor…The attendance of Foreign Office staff at the embassy event, as well as unnamed “representatives” from the UK Parliament, was hailed by Iranian state media. It is not known how many government officials took part.

"That nauseating spectacle has prompted a rare whistle-blowing moment from within the circles of Britain’s foreign policy establishment. In an article for the Telegraph yesterday, Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former UK ambassador to Yemen and who was a British diplomat from 1984 to 2017, identified a disastrous absence of moral clarity, “systematic bias” against Israel and Islamist entryism. He wrote:

"That officials thought it appropriate to celebrate the Iranian Islamic revolution speaks volumes about the strange topsy-turvy morality of the Foreign Office, an institution increasingly unsure who Britain’s friends and enemies actually are…

"Israel is treated with a forensic level of scrutiny that few other states receive, while the behaviour of its adversaries is frequently contextualised, rationalised, excused or ignored. Take the long list of recently retired senior Foreign Office signatories to a letter last year, calling for the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state, in the face of strenuous US objections. Or the official advice blowing hot and cold over Britain’s involvement in the current conflict with Iran…

"Two decades on from Blair/Bush, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that another factor has grown in importance: Islamist entryism not just in the Foreign Office but also throughout the Civil Service and a range of other professions. We have seen a steady reframing of debates, including in the sphere of national security. Allies portrayed as the problem, adversaries become misunderstood actors with legitimate grievances. Hate marches for Hamas and the Houthis show that inversion in society and the Civil Service reflects society. Over time, that inversion produces exactly the kind of misjudgment we saw this week.

"The Islamic Republic has been waging undeclared war on the West for nearly 47 years, promoting a “Death to America” message that applies equally to the Little Satan, the UK. Iran still refuses to withdraw the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and reaffirmed repeatedly since. That decree called for the murder of a British citizen for the crime of writing a novel – and very nearly killed him in 2022. Until it is formally rescinded, the idea that relations with Tehran can ever be described as friendly is fanciful. A government that still sanctions the killing of writers should not expect to party with British officials…

"It is mystifying that Sir Keir Starmer, having promised in opposition to proscribe the IRGC, still hasn’t done it, even after the EU has. We have had many recent terror plots in the UK, often against Jewish targets, and often sponsored by Iran. Who exactly needs to get killed before we take decisive action?

"Foreign policy begins with moral clarity. If we cannot even decide whether celebrating the birth of the Islamic Republic is appropriate for British officials, then it is little wonder that our position in the Middle East increasingly resembles that of a country sitting nervously on the fence, hoping the conflict will pass us by while our influence quietly ebbs away.

"This rare lifting of the curtain to reveal the moral squalor of Britain’s foreign policy establishment, civil service and wider society that is destroying the UK’s position in the world makes Fitton-Brown’s article exceptionally important. Apart from an item on GB News, however, no other media outlet has yet seen fit even to mention it.

"Says it all, doesn’t it."

Ignoring COVID's Impact

I've never stopped talking about COVID, and there are plenty of people on Twitter and elsewhere who make sure that COVID -- which is still here -- won't be forgotten.

However, there are also plenty of Americans who shrugged off COVID as "just a cold" and who have minimized or ignored it for the most part, preferring to look for conspiracies to explain the pandemic. Those people will never change. 

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Why we don't talk about COVID anymore

By Alissa Widman Neese at Axios 3-18-26 

Six years ago this week, COVID-19 dominated daily life. Schools closed, headlines tracked cases, and Ohio reported its first deaths and postponed a primary election.

Why it matters: Today, the pandemic that killed over 1 million Americans and reshaped society has largely faded from public conversation.

• That silence isn't unusual — but it could have real consequences, an Ohio State University public health historian says.

Driving the news: Associate professor Marian Moser Jones and other researchers have interviewed over 120 local and state health officials across the U.S. to document how they navigated the pandemic.

• They hope to create a historical record before memories fade and society moves on.
• "There's almost been a consensus — in a time when we don't have consensus about a lot — that we're going to move on and not talk about this anymore," Moser Jones tells Axios.

What they've found: Many health care workers witnessed traumatic scenes, including patients dying alone, and endured months of fear and uncertainty before vaccines and treatments existed.

• And officials, once praised as heroes, became targets of anger and blame.
• The urge to suppress painful experiences is deeply human, Moser Jones tells Axios.

Flashback: There was a similar desire to move on after the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed about 675,000 Americans and intertwined with World War I.

• It was also a tense, politicized time full of unrest, misinformation and, yes, mask resistance.
• Ohio-born President Warren G. Harding won in 1920 on a "return to normalcy" campaign, and society shifted focus into the Roaring Twenties.

Case in point: The library's Dispatch archives show references to "Spanish flu" or "Spanish influenza" — the virus' original misleading name — waned by the 1930s and then mostly disappeared for decades.

• In 1964, the newspaper's magazine published a four-page retrospective.

Between the lines: A politicized pandemic is hard to collectively mourn, Moser Jones says. Unlike wars or other tragedies, there are no remembrance days or memorials.

• And by its nature, an endemic virus has no true "end."

Yes, but: Putting the pandemic behind us too quickly makes it hard to assess what worked and what didn't — and whether public health officials are equipped for the next crisis.

The bottom line: "People are going to want to know what happened," Moser Jones says.

• "Pandemics are going to come back, whether we repress our memories or not."

Horrific New COVID Death Totals in 2020-2021

As if people need another reason create conspiracy theories about COVID, and to distrust the medical field. This tragic revelation comes from Scientific American 3-18-26:

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COVID probably killed 150,000 more people in its first two years than official U.S. tolls show. "We have severely undercounted the number of COVID deaths", scientists say.

By Meghan Bartels edited by Tanya Lewis

"COVID may have killed significantly more people in the U.S. in the first two years of the pandemic than official records indicate, with as many as one overlooked death for every five recorded ones. That brings the total to nearly one million deaths just in 2020 and 2021.

"That calculation comes from research published today in Science Advances that seeks to understand how many COVID deaths fell through the cracks of official reporting systems. The untallied cases show the burden of the pandemic in the U.S. fell most heavily on marginalized people.

“These vulnerable groups are just taking a higher risk at every step, and the accumulation of all of that is this disparity in COVID mortality at the end,” says Mathew Kiang, an epidemiologist at Stanford University and a co-author of the study.

"In the new research, Kiang and his colleagues analyzed official records published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for deaths occurring from March 2020 through December 2021 for adults aged 25 and older—some 5.7 million records in all. First, they fed a machine-learning algorithm the records of deaths in hospitals, which at the time were testing most patients for COVID. They trained the algorithm to recognize hospital deaths in which COVID was formally identified as an underlying cause. Then they used the algorithm to flag potential unrecognized COVID deaths by identifying records that looked like hospitalized COVID deaths but occurred in other settings where testing was less likely.

"All told, the algorithm identified between about 150,000 and 160,000 potential unrecognized COVID deaths on top of the 840,251 that were officially reported. Those numbers suggest that for every five recognized COVID deaths, one additional death went unmarked. That ratio is on par with other analyses that have simply compared the total observed number of deaths with the number of total deaths expected based on historical data, says Daniel Weinberger, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, but the new method is both more sophisticated and more granular.

Amanda Montañez; Source: “Applying Machine Learning to Identify Unrecognized COVID-19 Deaths Recorded as Other Causes of Death in the United States,” by Mathew Kiang et al., in Science Advances, Vol. 12; March 18, 2026 (data)

"Kiang says it isn’t surprising that deaths resulting from COVID were missed. “Death reporting in the United States is a fragmented infrastructure that’s underresourced,” he says. “During the pandemic, it was highly strained. We had more deaths than we’d ever had” in modern history.

"But what stood out to him were the patterns behind the unrecognized likely COVID deaths: they were most likely to have occurred among Hispanic people, at home, among less educated people, and among people with lower incomes. When analyzed by state, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina had the highest ratios of such deaths.

"Those patterns tell an important story about how COVID unfolded within the U.S. and its fragmented health systems. “This underreporting that we found wasn’t random,” Kiang says. “Pretty systematically, what we found was that communities in areas that were most impacted by the pandemic were also the ones with the most unrecognized COVID-19 mortality.” By analyzing the dramatic case of the COVID pandemic’s early years, researchers can better understand how the same factors that made people vulnerable to COVID affect more routine health conditions, Kiang says.

"During the pandemic, “systems in our society, including barriers to accessing health care, kept desperately ill Americans from recognizing the need for care and getting to the hospital,” says Steven Woolf, a physician and social epidemiologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, who was not involved in the new research. He worries not only that those barriers remain but also that cuts to Medicaid and increasing health insurance premiums may be exacerbating them. “People on the margins continue to die at disproportionate rates because they can’t access care.”

When Baseball Meant More Than Just a Game

While watching the final moments of Venezuela's emotional victory in the World Baseball Classic last night, it was obvious to me that the win meant much more to the team than just a trophy. They were winning for their fellow countrymen as a reward for all they had gone through with Maduro. The reactions of the players and especially the fans brought back memories for me of the night President Bush threw out the first pitch -- a perfect strike -- at Yankee Stadium a month after the horrific September 11 terrorist attacks. That attack had unified the country, brought back patriotism, the American flag, and  the singing of  "God Bless America" during the seventh inning stretch.

And Bush's strike in the old Yankee Stadium was the cathartic moment we all needed. 

I think Venezuelans must have felt similar emotions last night.

Your Local Epidemiologist, 3-17-26

Good news on the vaccines front from Katelyn Jetelina, Your Local Epidemiologist, March 17, 2026:

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A win for your access to vaccines, federal accountability, and health
AAP vs. RFK vaccine lawsuit

HERE. WE. GO.

After a year of chaos around vaccines in the United States, a federal judge just slammed the brakes.

In a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics against RFK Jr., a federal court ruled that the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee cannot move forward under the changes he imposed and reversed every action the committee had taken since summer 2025.

This is an incredible victory for kids who deserve barrier-free access to vaccines, for clinicians who need clear guidance and the autonomy to do what’s best for their patients, and for a country that deserves leadership capable of making both possible.

What happened?

ACIP is an external advisory committee to the CDC. It has an enormous influence on who should get which vaccines and when. Its recommendations shape what insurance covers, what physicians can routinely offer, and how easily families can access vaccines if they choose them.

Because of that influence, ACIP has traditionally relied on a few core principles:

• Transparent meetings

• Honest presentation of data

• Rigorous review of safety and effectiveness

• Flexibility when new evidence emerges

This process isn’t perfect, and there’s real room for improvement. But it works when evidence is weighed carefully, openly, and fairly.

That same influence also made ACIP a powerful lever. And RFK Jr., who has spent more than two decades publicly questioning vaccines and amplifying falsehoods about their safety and value, was well positioned to pull it.

Last June, after becoming HHS Secretary, he removed the entire existing committee and replaced it with new members whose expertise and interpretation of evidence raised serious concerns. The meetings that followed reflected those concerns:

• Evidence was often presented selectively

• Important context was missing

• CDC scientists weren’t allowed to present their own data

• Claims were made that didn’t align with the broader body of evidence on vaccine safety and effectiveness. The Evidence Collective’s endless documentation of fact-checking helped the case.

Science should include disagreement and hard questions, which is healthy. The concern is that a process designed to rigorously evaluate evidence instead becomes a platform for ideological beliefs.

Then, in January 2026, RFK Jr. bypassed his own ACIP committee, the CDC Director, and every scientific and clinical process we have, including rejecting public comment, to unilaterally make sweeping changes to the routine vaccination schedule for children in the United States. This change wasn’t based on new data or new evidence, but rather on political and ideological reasons.

What did the judge say?

The judge temporarily ruled that the decisions made over the past year are invalid, because the process itself broke the law in three ways:

1. The CDC bypassed ACIP, which Congress requires. Multiple federal laws covering insurance coverage, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, and the Vaccines for Children program explicitly tie benefits and obligations to ACIP’s recommendations. The HHS Secretary cannot simply change the immunization schedule without ACIP’s involvement.

2. The new ACIP was not “fairly balanced” as required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Of the 15 members, the court found only about 6 had meaningful vaccine-related expertise. ACIP’s own charter requires members to be knowledgeable in immunization practices, vaccine use, or vaccine safety research. The rushed appointment process (replacing all 17 members in roughly two days, without normal outreach or vetting) further undermined the committee’s legitimacy.

3. Changes were arbitrary and capricious. The government gave no real explanation for departing from decades of established process, other than that it was following a presidential memo. That’s not enough under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The judge had some pretty incredible remarks in his ruling:

What’s next?

This ruling is a temporary hold on ACIP while the case moves through the courts.

A much-anticipated ACIP meeting this week was expected to include several votes, including on Covid-19 vaccines. ACIP meetings cannot proceed with the current members, so the meeting is cancelled.

Now, technically, this group of advisors handpicked by RFK Jr. could still gather informally. Anyone can meet anytime. They could hold a book club, a coffee chat, or a knitting circle. And they could find ways to megaphone their ideologies and cherry-pick studies. Many of them have very big online platforms.

But what they can’t do is operate as an official federal advisory committee: using government meeting rooms, staff support, travel funding, and government levers to shape your access to vaccines, like through insurance coverage or physician liability threats.

The real question now is what comes next:

• Will RFK Jr. follow proper procedure in appointing a new set of ACIP members?

• What will happen with the fall vaccines? (We still have some time for this one; June is typically the deadline.)

• Will professional organizations, like the AAP, take the lead, and will they remain accountable through truly public meetings? So far, all deliberations have been behind closed doors.

While this pause is important, the medical decisions Americans make every day do not stop. Neither does the accumulation of new evidence, nor the development of innovative vaccines that are hopefully coming down the pipeline. It’s time to figure out what that next step is before this is clogged up too long.

What does this mean for you right now?

You can get the vaccines you want, for free, based on the best available evidence, and with the same trusted conversations with your doctor. All of the vaccine policy changes RFK Jr. put in place have now been reversed to their pre-June 2025 state.

• This ruling is a temporary hold, and things could still change as the case moves through the courts.

• To avoid policy whiplash, continue to rely on the vaccine schedules from specialty medical societies like AAP, AAFP, and ACOG as a steady guide through this storm.

The past year of shifting vaccine policy has left many people with questions and concerns. This ruling does not erase that confusion or immediately reach every family that fell through the cracks and remains unprotected against diseases. We have our work cut out for us.

It also cannot undo the enormous cost of countless hours spent responding to sudden policy changes, correcting falsehoods, and stabilizing guidance for patients and clinicians. This time, energy, and taxpayer dollars could have been used to solve real health problems.

Bottom line

This is a huge win. It restores access to vaccines (for now) and puts the process that determines who can access them back on track. That accountability matters. It protects Americans’ ability to make informed medical decisions and gives people a fair shot at the best possible health, even when so much in this country works against it. It’s a principle countless people have been fighting for, again and again, over the past year. And now, the federal court has confirmed that cutting corners and carelessly removing protections for Americans is not just bad public health policy. It’s illegal.

Love, YLE

Good Riddance to Joe Kent, Who Resigned With Antisemitic Blame

I saw this on the news today.  Joe Kent, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is now its former director, as he has announced his resignation. On Twitter/X, he posted this:

"I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."

He showed his true colors in that statement about Israel and its American lobby, as these are common antisemitic tropes. Maybe he can get a job on Tucker Carlson's radio show.

All I can say is good riddance to him, and thank you to our most faithful partner, Israel. If any country knows all about evil and about the attacks from Iran, it's Israel. We have heard nothing but "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" since 1979, and it was past time for us to put an end to it.

The Joe Kents of this world are a dime a dozen. There is only one Israel, and there is only one America. 

Churchill Must Be Rolling In His Grave Over The Collapse of England

At Spiked, Brendan O'Neill vividly describes the British version of the obscene anti-American, anti-Jewish, and pro-Iran demonstrations we saw last week in New York City.

Will we also be seeing this sort of contemptible gathering later this year at the 25th anniversary remembrance of the victims of the September 11 terror attacks? 

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Al-Quds Day proves it – multiculturalism has been the death of Britain. The Al-Quds gathering in London was a sickening spectacle of hatred and treason. 

Brendan O'Neill, 3-15-26

"Today in London, a huge mob gathered to sing the praises of a tyrant. They fawned over a murderous theocrat. They swooned like the most sycophantic of acolytes over a man who hated Jews, denied the Holocaust and green-lit the massacre of women. Anyone still denying that multiculturalism is Britain’s death warrant should have been made to mingle with these brash lovers of foreign tyranny. 

"It was the Al-Quds gathering. That’s the annual pro-theocracy shindig, where fanboys of the Iranian regime gather to laud the ayatollah and libel the Jewish State in cities across the world. This year, because of the war in Iran, the London march was banned by the UK home secretary. But a static get-together took place, on the south bank of the Thames. I went down there to see it for myself, and it was one of the most menacing assemblies I’ve ever witnessed.

"Many were in mourning for the butcher of Tehran: Ayatollah Khamenei, who was taken out by an Israeli airstrike on 28 February. His likeness was everywhere. Children waved placards adorned with his face. A vast banner with his beardy image invited us to join him on ‘the right side of history’. This is a man whose vicious militias murdered thousands of innocents just two months ago and yet he was being gushed over as if he were Nelson Mandela.

"‘Khamenei is our leader’, a sea of placards said. Not anymore he isn’t. He’s dead. Jot that down. He’s been sent packing for his 72 virgins by those Jews you hate. Are we allowed to talk about how serious this is, not to mention how sickening – this dystopic vision of people in the UK openly swearing allegiance to an enemy of the West whose proxies murder Jews and whose guards butcher civilians? You can call me ‘Islamophobic’ till the cows come home – to my mind, this is straight-up treasonous behaviour.

"There was the usual Zio-baiting. Placards cried: ‘Stop the genocide! Hands off Iran!’ It’s not genocide, it’s war, you pussies. And it’s a war your idol started when the army of anti-Semites he funded and armed invaded Israel to rape and murder Jews. What a brilliant insight into the fathomless self-pity that lurks within strongman Islamism, when they’ll wail ‘Genocide!’ like big babies just because the Jews had the temerity to respond to the fascistic provocations of their sainted ayatollah. Total soy boy behaviour. 

"‘Israel is a terror state!’, they chanted, which is rich from fools who fall at the feet of a medieval regime that shoots women in the head for wanting freedom. I saw a kid with a placard saying ‘Al-Quds will be liberated’. Al-Quds is Arabic for Jerusalem, of course. Al-Quds Day was instituted by the Islamic Republic itself, to engender global support for its deranged imperious goal of conquering Jerusalem. I felt a pang of sadness at the sight of what I presume is a British-born kid, innocently giving voice to the anti-Semitic atrocity dream of stealing Jerusalem from the Jews.

"Anti-Semitism spread through the crowd like electricity. A truck beamed a blood-red image of Jeffrey Epstein, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump staring down the mullahs. ‘World War Epstein’, it said. This is Jew hatred masquerading as cultural critique, the implication being that a network of Jewy paedos is trying to destroy the holy Islamic Republic.

"It was the mob’s dog-whistlin’ Epstein euphemisms that led to me getting into trouble. I saw an elderly lady, a leftist I think, with a placard that said: ‘Operation Epstein Fury. The Epstein class will burn the whole world down to save themselves.’ By this point, I was at the end of my tether. ‘Nice anti-Semitic placard’, I said. Then all hell broke loose.

"The lady snitched on me to the organisers. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by a mob of fuming young men. Someone complaining about anti-Semitism? Fucking get him! They squared up to me, shoved me, asked me, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’. ‘I’m observing and taking pictures’, I said. They put their hands up to block my view, they pressed up against me with menacing intention, they glared. So I said what had to be said: ‘This isn’t the Islamic Republic – you can’t silence journalists.’

"That was game over for me. The fury was palpable. The expletives flew – quite unbecoming of religious men, I thought. The police had to escort me away for my own safety. The mob followed. The cops waited until I had got on a Lime bike before returning to the demo. I gave a little wave to my theocratic harassers and cycled off, wondering to myself: what has become of my city?

"I was left in no doubt whatsoever of the double standards that fuel ruling-class identitarianism. Imagine if white Brits had gathered to laud a foreign neo-Nazi who revels in the murder of Jews. Or if they had swarmed the streets to swear allegiance to some far-right regime overseas. The Guardian would cancel all leave for its hacks. Keir Starmer would be readying a televised homily. The cops would have cracked heads on those streets today. But when it comes to a non-white minority, it’s fine apparently. This is the racism of low expectations, in all its bigoted, demented glory. 

"Fundamentally, though, it was the ideology of multiculturalism that was indicted on the streets of London today. There is a tendency to see multiculturalism as merely divisive. If only. The true social cancer in this self-hating creed is that it actively incites hostility towards the nation itself. It simultaneously inflames a culture of grievance within minority groups while heaping sarcastic derision on Britain and its history, giving rise to an extraordinary amount of anti-British, anti-Western, anti-social animus. I glimpsed that today. A bristling hostility towards me not only for my crime of refusing to hate Jews, but also for what I was no doubt seen to represent: whiteness, Britishness, them. The Iran War has dragged into the spotlight the deep fissures on the Western homefront – it would be suicidal to ignore them."

Force of Infection, 3-15-26

 Here is the 3-15-26 Force of Infection newsletter from Dr. Caitlin Rivers:

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RSV is peaking later than usual this year

Flu is declining, norovirus hits a new high, and measles cases pass 1,300

Mar 15, 2026

Respiratory Diseases

Influenza-like illness

Flu season is still dragging on, but indicators are moving in the right direction. Two more states have moved out of high and very high activity levels—39 jurisdictions are now at moderate, low or minimal activity, compared to 37 last week.

Visits to the doctor for influenza-like illness (that is, fever and cough or sore throat) decreased this week to 3.7%. We are getting closer to, but are still above, the baseline of 3.1%. Once we drop below that, we will have hit the end of flu season.

Outpatient influenza-like illness held roughly steady for the youngest age groups this week, at 10.3% for those aged 0-4 and 7.4% for those aged 5-24. It decreased slightly for all other ages, with all at or below 3%.

More severe illness remains moderate, but is also declining. ED visits decreased slightly to 2.4% this week. Hospitalizations also decreased, to 2.1 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.

This flu season has been particularly rough for children. Interim assessments by the CDC categorize this season as moderate for adults and older adults, and severe for children. The cumulative hospitalization rate for children is the second highest it has been since the 2010-2011 flu season.

Flu B continues its rise, accounting for 73% of clinical lab samples and 40% of public lab samples.

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COVID-19

Covid-19 activity is pretty low and continuing to decline further. The Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics estimates that in most states, Covid-19 is likely declining (i.e., that the reproductive rate is <1).

ED visits held steady at a low 0.5% nationally. Covid-19 is sending slightly higher numbers of people to the ED in the South and Midwest (~0.6%) and wastewater activity in both regions is moderate. Activity remains lowest in the West, with ED visits a bit under 0.4% and very low wastewater activity. The Northeast is right in between.

Hospitalizations have been gently declining since the beginning of January, and are now down to a low 1.0 hospitalizations per 100,000 people.

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RSV & Other Bugs

RSV: RSV was very slow to ramp up this year, which means we are seeing peak season quite a bit later than we usually do. We are just now reaching the levels of activity we typically see in late December/early January.

However, it does appear that we may have peaked. Test positivity dipped slightly this week to 8.6%. While ED visits held roughly steady at a moderate 0.5% for the total population, rates decreased slightly for the youngest age groups. They dipped to 4.7% for those <1 year, and to 4.0% for those 1-4 years old.

Similarly, hospitalizations decreased slightly to 2.8 hospitalizations per 100,000 people. There was a steep drop in hospitalization for babies (<1 year), dropping from 39 to 27.4 hospitalizations per 100,000 this past week. Hospitalizations also decreased several points for those 1-4 years of age, decreasing to 11.6.

Other Bugs: Cold season is not over either.

• Human coronaviruses remain very high.

• Human metapneumovirus continues its upward climb, though the rate is slowing, suggesting we are nearing peak.

• Adenovirus is spreading at moderate-to-high levels.

• Parainfluenza and rhinoviruses/enteroviruses remain very low.

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Norovirus

Norovirus continues to ratchet up, reaching a new peak for the season: 16.4% test positivity. Every region reported high or very high and rising rates this week.

Stomach bugs spread extremely easily. You can reduce your risk of becoming infected by washing your hands with soap and water regularly, avoiding touching your face, and avoiding communal food (e.g., bowls of nuts and candy).

If someone in your household becomes ill, clean hard surfaces with soap and water, or with a diluted bleach solution; use the sanitizing cycle on a dishwasher to wash dishes; and wash and dry clothes and linens at the highest possible heat setting.

Norovirus continues to spread very effectively for a few days after symptoms stop, so it is best to stay home and avoid preparing food or drinks for others for at least 2-3 days after you start to feel a bit better.

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Food recalls

The following foods are being recalled because they are contaminated. Please check your cupboards and throw out any of these items:

New:

• Nothing new this week

Previously Reported:

• Expanded recall of frozen chicken fried rice products, sold under multiple brand names: Trader Joe’s, Ajinomoto, Kroger, Ling Ling, and Tai Pei, due to possible glass shards (more info)

• Great Value (sold at Walmart) Cottage Cheese (more info)

• Elite Treats Chicken Chips (for dogs). These may be contaminated with salmonella, which poses a health risk not only for dogs, but also for humans who handle the product or contaminated surfaces (more info).

• Bremer Family Size Italian Meatballs (frozen, ready-to-eat) (more info)

• Multiple flavors of cream cheese under the Made Fresh Salads, Inc. label (more info)

• Gerber Arrowroot biscuits (more info)

• Organic chia seeds sold by Navitas Organics (more info)

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In other news

• Regional editions are wrapping up for the season. The last state-level edition will publish March 22, with regional coverage resuming in October when flu season resumes. In the meantime, paid subscribers will continue to receive a weekly national report through the summer months, which matters more than it might sound, as Covid-19 tends to surge in summer. Free subscribers will receive occasional essays through the summer months.

• How effective were the flu vaccines this year? CDC recently published an interim assessment of flu vaccine effectiveness for this season (2025-2026) in the US.

  • For children between 6 months and 18 years, the seasonal flu vaccine was 38-41% effective against outpatient visits and 41% effective against hospitalization. For adults, the vaccine was 22-34% effective against outpatient visits, and 30% effective against hospitalization.

  • This level of vaccine effectiveness is fairly average, but a bit on the lower end. This is likely because there was a bit of a mismatch between the circulating strains and the strains selected for the vaccine. When season flu vaccines are made each year, there is a bit of guesswork involved to try to select strains that will be most common the coming season. This year, the match was not great owing to the emergence and subsequent dominance of H3N2 subclade K.

• FDA expands approval for RSV vaccine to include younger adults at high risk. Arexvy was previously approved for use in older adults. The FDA has now approved the use of Arexvy (produced by GSK) for adults 18-49 who are at increased risk of lower respiratory tract disease due to RSV. Examples of people at higher risk include those with heart disease, asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis or other lung diseases, chronic heart failure, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease.

• Measles spread continues. There have been 1,362 cases of confirmed measles so far this year in the US, across 31 states. I write regularly about the importance of achieving high (>95%) rates of vaccination to stop community spread and achieve herd immunity. Herd immunity protects everyone, including the most vulnerable to severe illness: infants who are too young to be vaccinated, individuals who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons (such as an allergy), or immunocompromised individuals who have been vaccinated but do not have adequate immune protection. A recent story published by ABC News about Makayla Skjerva, a 14-year-old girl from North Dakota, highlights the risks that losing herd immunity poses to immunocompromised individuals. Despite being fully vaccinated, Makayla became severely ill after a measles exposure at her school, eventually needing intensive care and a respirator. She was so sick that doctors advised her family to say their goodbyes. Fortunately, she survived, but was hospitalized for weeks, is still recovering her ability to walk, and has not yet returned to in-person schooling.