AP: The super spreaders behind top COVID-19 conspiracy theories

A notorious anti-vaccine gadfly called for gun violence against volunteers canvassing Los Angeles-area homes to encourage the life-saving inoculations.

Jason Lefkowitz, who has been making Nazi salutes and wearing a Star of David as he harasses customers and employees over coronavirus prevention measures, barked threats into a microphone during a protest, in a video clip posted by Resist Programming.

"When people come to your door, get the men and kick their ass," Lefkowitz bellowed. "They're not here to -- 'Can spread the wonderful word of [Dr. Anthony] Fauci?' F*ck you! No! No, get off my property. Get out of America, you're not welcome here."

The assembled crowd laughed and cheered as he stalked back and forth gripping the microphone.

"We need to fight back," Lefkowitz said. "Get your guns -- get them, learn how to use them."

He continued, saying that he was only a comedian and lacked the training to fight back against the government -- but he encouraged others to take action.

"I have no idea what to do, no idea," Lefkowitz told the crowd. "But someone here does, so they need to step up, too."

He said he was able to organize large-scale protests or spontaneous disruptions at local businesses, but he wants someone else to start shooting.

"I don't know how to shoot a rifle," Lefkowitz said, pointing his fingers like a pistol. "This is serious. They're coming hard and they're coming fast."

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hanimmal said:

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New guidance from the federal government set off a cascade of mask rules across the nation Wednesday as cities, states, schools and businesses raced to restore mandates and others pushed back against the guidelines at a time when Americans are exhausted and confused over constantly shifting pandemic measures.

Nevada and Kansas City, Missouri, were among the locations that moved swiftly to re-impose indoor mask requirements following Tuesday’s announcement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But governors in Arizona, Pennsylvania and South Carolina said they would resist reversing course.

The federal recommendations quickly plunged Americans into another emotionally charged debate over the face coverings meant to curb easy transmission of the deadly coronavirus.

In Florida, a Broward County School Board meeting devolved into a screaming match between irate parents and board members on Tuesday. Some protesters even took to burning face masks outside the building.

In suburban Atlanta, Jamie Reinhold said she would pull her kids from school if the district stuck to the CDC’s guidance, which the 52-year-old believes takes the country “backward” and damages confidence in the vaccines.

“If you believe in the masks, go ahead, but don’t try to tell me what to do for my child’s health and safety and immune system,” she said. “It’s my child. It’s my choice.”

And in New Orleans, Lisa Beaudean said she was not convinced mask mandates would inspire the unvaccinated — who account for most new infections — to take the virus seriously and get inoculated.

“I’m very frustrated,” the St. Louis woman said as she strolled the French Quarter without a mask. “For the last 18 months, I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do, and there are no repercussions for those who haven’t done what they’re supposed to do.”

Elsewhere, Ford Motor Co. said it would reinstate mask protocols for all employees and visitors at its Missouri and Florida facilities. The two states are among the hardest hit by the summer surge in which the U.S. is now averaging more than 60,000 new cases a day, driven by the highly contagious delta variant.



Google also postponed a planned Sept. 1 return to the office for most of its more than 130,000 employees until mid-October, following a similar move by Apple. Google said Wednesday that it will also eventually require everyone on staff to be vaccinated, a mandate that President Joe Biden said he’s also weighing for federal employees.

Other government leaders, meanwhile, said they will hold off reinstating mask rules for now.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said he’s not considering imposing a mask mandate in schools or statewide, arguing that such orders were necessary before there was a vaccine.

“People have the ability to make the decision to get a vaccine,” the Democrat told a Pittsburgh radio station Tuesday. “If they do, that’s the protection.”

The CDC’s new guidance applies to places with at least 50 new cases per 100,000 people in the last week, which is roughly 60% of all U.S. counties, federal officials said. Nearly all of the South and Southwest is subject to the guidance, but most communities in the Northeast — with the exception of major metro areas like New York City and Boston — are exempt for now, according to the CDC’s COVID tracker.

The stark partisan divide over mask wearing set up the potential for a patchwork of regulations within states and counties.

In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava imposed an indoor mask mandate Wednesday at county facilities.

The Democrat’s announcement, which does not apply to businesses or restaurants, comes after Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law in May giving the state the power to invalidate local pandemic measures, including mask mandates and limits on business operations.

“We have all come too far. We have all sacrificed too much in this past almost year and a half. We cannot turn back now,” Levine Cava said.

In Missouri, the St. Louis County Council voted Tuesday to reverse the county’s mask mandate, just a day after it became one of the first reinstated in the country.

But Democratic County Executive Sam Page insisted Wednesday that the mandate remained in effect and blamed the pushback on politics.

On the other side of the state, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, a Democrat, reinstated a similar indoor mask mandate for Missouri’s largest city.

State Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, has sued to block the St. Louis-area mandate and has vowed to do the same for Kansas City’s requirement, saying on Twitter that the mandates are “about politics & control, not science.”

The CDC’s updated guidance was prompted by new data suggesting vaccinated people can pass on the virus in rare cases.

But the agency’s director, Rochelle Walensky, stressed that the vaccines are working by preventing greater levels of hospitalization and death. Unvaccinated people account for the vast number of new infections. Two-thirds of the vaccine-eligible population in the U.S. has received at least one dose.

“I know this is not a message America wants to hear,” Walensky told CNN on Wednesday. “With prior variants, when people had these rare breakthrough infections, we didn’t see the capacity of them to spread the virus to others, but with the delta variant, we now see that you can actually now pass it to somebody else.”

In Provincetown, Massachusetts, where officials earlier this week re-imposed an indoor mask requirement following a surge in COVID-19 cases this month, store owner Patrick Patrick says he doesn’t mind asking customers to mask up once more.

The owner of Marine Specialties, a long running Army-Navy store, had been leery of the decision to drop nearly all virus safety mandates ahead of the busy summer season. He even tried to impose his own in-store mask mandate before relenting last month.

“If we’d stuck with masks all along, I don’t think we’d be having this conversation,” Patrick said. “We wore them all last summer, and we didn’t have a single case in Provincetown. Now see where we’re at.”

As of Wednesday, the town had reported more than 800 cases associated with the most recent cluster, which started around the busy July 4th holiday.

The business drop-off has been significant, Patrick said. But he hopes the return of masks helps brings visitors peace of mind.

“I don’t see masks as bad for business,” he said. “If it gets people back out and feeling safe, it’s worth it. We take care of public health and safety, the dollars and cents will take care of themselves.”

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BANGKOK (AP) — With coronavirus deaths rising in Myanmar, allegations are growing from residents and human rights activists that the military government, which seized control in February, is using the pandemic to consolidate power and crush opposition.

In the last week, the per capita death rate in Myanmar surpassed those of Indonesia and Malaysia to become the worst in Southeast Asia. The country’s crippled health care system has rapidly become overwhelmed with new patients sick with COVID-19.

Supplies of medical oxygen are running low, and the government has restricted its private sale in many places, saying it is trying to prevent hoarding. But that has led to widespread allegations that the stocks are being directed to government supporters and military-run hospitals.

At the same time, medical workers have been targeted after spearheading a civil disobedience movement that urged professionals and civil servants not to cooperate with the government, known as the State Administrative Council.

“They have stopped distributing personal protection equipment and masks, and they will not let civilians who they suspect are supporting the democracy movement be treated in hospitals, and they’re arresting doctors who support the civil disobedience movement,” said Yanghee Lee, the U.N.’s former Myanmar human rights expert and a founding member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar.

“With the oxygen, they have banned sales to civilians or people who are not supported by the SAC, so they’re using something that can save the people against the people,” she said. “The military is weaponizing COVID.”

Myanmar’s Deputy Information Minister Zaw Min Tun did not respond to questions about the allegations, but with growing internal and external pressure to get the pandemic under control, the leadership has been on a public relations offensive.

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In the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper this week, several articles highlighted the government’s efforts, including what it called a push to resume vaccinations and increase oxygen supplies.

Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the military commander who heads the SAC, was cited as saying that efforts were also being made to seek support from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and unspecified “friendly countries.”

“Efforts must be made for ensuring better health of the State and the people,” he was quoted as saying.

Myanmar reported another 342 deaths Thursday, and 5,234 new infections. Its 7-day rolling average of deaths per 1 million people rose to 6.29 — more than double the rate of 3.04 in India at the peak of its crisis in May. The figures in Myanmar are thought to be a drastic undercount due to lack of testing and reporting.

“There is a big difference between the actual death toll from COVID-19 of the Military Council and reality,” a physician from the Mawlamyine General Hospital in Myanmar’s fourth-largest city told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal. “There are a lot of people in the community who have died of the disease and cannot be counted.”

Videos proliferate on social media showing apparent virus victims dead in their homes for lack of treatment and long lines of people waiting for what oxygen supplies are still available. The government denies reports that cemeteries in Yangon have been overwhelmed but announced Tuesday they were building new facilities that could cremate up to 3,000 bodies per day.

“By letting COVID-19 run out of control, the military junta is failing the Burmese people as well as the wider region and world, which can be threatened by new variants fueled by unchecked spread of the disease in places like Myanmar,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “The problem is the junta cares more about holding on to power than stopping the pandemic.”

Myanmar is one of the region’s poorest countries and already was in a vulnerable position when the military seized power, triggering a violent political struggle.

Under the civilian former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar had weathered a coronavirus surge last year by severely restricting travel and sealing off Yangon. Vaccines were secured from India and China, but Suu Kyi’s government was ousted less than a week after the first shots were given.

As civil disobedience grew after Suu Kyi’s removal, public hospitals were basically closed as doctors and other staff refused to work under the new administration, instead running makeshift clinics for which they faced arrest, if caught.

Some have returned to public hospitals, but the Mawlamyine doctor interviewed by AP said it was too dangerous.

“I could be arrested by the junta anytime if I returned to the hospital,” added the doctor, who was part of the disobedience movement and has been treating patients with supplies he has scrounged.

According to Tom Andrews, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s independent expert on human rights in Myanmar, government forces have engaged in at least 260 attacks on medical personnel and facilities, killing 18. At least 67 health care professionals had been detained and another 600 are being sought.

Military hospitals kept operating after Suu Kyi’s ouster but were shunned by many people and the vaccination program slowed to a crawl before apparently fizzling out completely until this week. There are no solid figures on vaccinations, but it’s believed that about 3% of the population could have received two shots.

The rapid rise in COVID -19 illnesses is “extremely concerning, particularly with limited availability of health services and oxygen supplies,” said Joy Singhal, head of the Red Cross’ Myanmar delegation.

“There is an urgent need for greater testing, contact tracing and COVID-19 vaccinations to help curb the pandemic,” he told AP. “This latest surge is a bitter blow to millions of people in Myanmar already coping with worsening economic and social hardships.”

Earlier this week, Andrews urged the U.N. Security Council and member states to push for a “COVID cease-fire.”

“The United Nations cannot afford to be complacent while the junta ruthlessly attacks medical personnel as COVID-19 spreads unchecked,” he said. “They must act to end this violence so that doctors and nurses can provide lifesaving care and international organizations can help deliver vaccinations and related medical care.”

After a long lull in humanitarian aid, China recently began delivering vaccines. It sent 736,000 doses to Yangon this month, the first of 2 million being donated, and reportedly more than 10,000 to the Kachin Independence Army, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in a northern border area where the virus has spilled over into China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian declined to comment directly earlier this week on the report of the delivery to the KIA, noting instead “the epidemic is a common enemy to all mankind.”

The Global New Light reported Myanmar received another 1 million doses purchased from China.

COVID-19 outbreaks have been reported as widespread in Myanmar’s prisons. On Wednesday, state-run MRTV television showed what it said were 610 prisoners from Yangon’s Insein Prison being vaccinated. The report was met with skepticism and derision on social media.

Lee said if the government is trying to use vaccines and other aid to its advantage by positioning itself as the solution to the pandemic, it’s too late.

“The people know now and it’s been too long,” she said. “COVID was not manmade but it got out of proportion because of complicity and deliberate blockage of services — there’s no going back.”

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Executives of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer predicted Wednesday that vaccine boosters would soon be needed, a declaration that came on the same day the company published data showing that its coronavirus shots remained robustly protective six months after vaccination, providing nearly complete protection against severe disease. Hours later, Israeli health officials moved toward making boosters available for older residents.

Pfizer’s paper, which has not yet undergone peer review, showed a slight drop in efficacy against any symptomatic cases of covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, from 96 percent protection in the first two months after vaccination to 84 percent after four months.

Company officials also presented data showing that a third shot could boost disease-fighting antibodies many times higher than the level achieved by the standard two-dose regimen. They said on a quarterly earnings call that they planned to seek authorization for a booster by mid-August, reiterating the company’s belief that a third dose would be needed to enhance immunity within a year of vaccination.

“There is very good protection in the beginning, and then there’s waning. And when you come closer to six months, [waning] which is even more profound with delta [variant],” Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla said. “The waning is … more profound for mild cases, but there is a clear waning also for hospitalizations and severe disease.”

In Israel, Health Ministry officials late Wednesday recommended administering booster shots to older adults. The director general of the Health Ministry is expected to accept that recommendation in coming days and will decide whether the target group will include people older than 65 or older than 75.

Despite a lack of regulatory approval for boosters in the United States or Europe and the absence of definitive data, the Israeli experts concluded that the peril posed by the apparent waning of vaccine efficacy over time, alongside a spike in infections, outweighs the risk of pursuing a booster shot policy for the elderly.

The Israeli officials said protection against serious illness for those older than 60 who were vaccinated in January dropped from 97 percent to about 81 percent. For those older than 60 vaccinated in March, it fell to about 84 percent. They said efficacy remained at 93 percent for people ages 40 to 59 years.

The data released Wednesday by Pfizer, when viewed across the entirety of the six-month period covered in the paper, showed the vaccine was 91 percent protective overall. The findings come from the continuation of a large clinical trial that began last summer, so they do not include the period when the delta variant had emerged and become dominant.

Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, said the vaccines’ protection against severe disease remains “pretty high, but we do see some lowering, particularly in real-world evidence studies from Israel. We see some lowering in that protection in risk groups such as older adults, immunocompromised.”

But outside vaccine experts described the data as encouraging, even if they believe boosters will be necessary at some point for the general population and probably sooner for some groups, such as people with compromised immune systems. Pfizer’s analysis showed the vaccine was 97 percent effective against severe disease. The protection in South Africa, where a particularly worrisome variant capable of dodging immunity exists, was 100 percent.

“This Pfizer study, I view it as incredibly good news,” said Larry Corey, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. “We have to take some basic stock here about what’s our primary goal of vaccination. If we do have a virus able to break through and give you a cold, but the vaccine is keeping you from severe disease, keeping you out of the hospital ... where should our emphasis and resources be?”

Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said it was important to monitor how the vaccine’s performance changes over time but noted that its protection against severe disease remains “extremely high.”

“Our main concern in the U.S. and in the world right now are the large numbers of unvaccinated people, and getting them vaccinated should be the emphasis,” Neuzil said.

Natalie Dean, a biostatistics expert at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, said the vaccines dawned with such a high level of efficacy that a comparatively slight erosion of effectiveness should not be regarded with alarm.

“You have to sort of take the numbers as they are, which is still just a high number,” Dean said. “The fact that it started from an even higher place is what affects how people interpret the results. … It is possible that there’s some waning of that first line of defense, that’s going to be the best at preventing just infection or mild disease. But ... it’s still holding up well.”

Pfizer presented data on a third dose at least six months after full vaccination, showing that it caused antibody numbers to soar, including disease fighters capable of neutralizing the delta variant. Pfizer’s leaders have repeatedly predicted that a third shot will be needed within a year of vaccination, but federal officials made the rare move this month to issue a statement that the decision would be made by public health officials on the basis of a totality of data only partly informed by data from pharmaceutical companies.

“We continue to believe it is likely that a third-dose booster may be needed within six to 12 months after full vaccination to maintain the highest level of protection,” Dolsten said.

On its earnings call, Pfizer updated its financial predictions to say the company expected $33.5 billion of revenue from its coronavirus vaccines this year. The company plans to make 3 billion doses in 2021 and 4 billion in 2022.

“There are a fair number of infectious-disease doctors and public health persons who are disappointed and actually a bit grumpy about Pfizer. Pfizer is out there trying to make recommendations of national policy via press release,” said William Schaffner, a professor of health policy and medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “Many of us think that’s flagrantly inappropriate.”

Instead, Schaffner said, the company should be having discussions with the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “not out there to the general public.”
Bourla said on the call that regulators would make the decision in each country, including the United States.

“I don’t think that there is different interpretation of data between us and regulatory authorities around the world. Actually, there is extremely good collaboration and the same interpretation,” Bourla said. “The FDA needs to review [the data] and then provide, or not, their approval. And then once it is approved, the third-dose booster, then the CDC needs to understand the situation in the country. And then, after a period of time, they will help to make a recommendation about the booster.”

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In an interview aired on Thursday, CNN's Gary Tuchman spoke to Andy Daniels, the CEO of Memorial Regional Health in western Colorado and a self-described "super-conservative," about the attacks on science and public health by his congresswoman, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) — and Daniels had a few scathing things to say about her.

"How does it make you feel, the way Representative Boebert has treated this pandemic?" asked Tuchman. "The masks? The vaccine?"

"I am embarrassed for Colorado, quite frankly," said Daniels. "I am embarrassed that she is my representative."

"So, you are the CEO of an important hospital in her district, and you are willing to go out on a limb and say that?" asked Tuchman.

"I am," confirmed Daniels. "I think if you are going to take a stance in healthcare policy, you might actually want to learn something about healthcare policy."

Boebert has attacked President Joe Biden's proposal to send door-to-door volunteers to encourage vaccination, demanding the government not come to her door with the "Fauci Ouchie," and caused a stir this week for throwing a face mask at a congressional staffer who offered it to her on the floor.

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BERLIN — An outcry is brewing in Germany as thousands are set to be revaccinated after a nurse admitted to injecting patients with saline solution instead of a coronavirus vaccine.

Almost 9,000 people who may have received bogus shots in the spring will be offered new vaccinations, Friesland District Administrator Sven Ambrosy said at a news conference Tuesday.

The nurse, who has not been publicly identified, had initially admitted to giving six patients shots of saline solution after suspicions were raised in April. She said she did so to cover up the fact that she had dropped a vial of the Pfizer vaccine, German television channel NDR reported.

However, since antibody testing was carried out, a much wider group of people is suspected to have been affected. Police have also discovered that the woman, who worked with the Red Cross, had shared vaccine-skeptical posts on social media, NDR said.

Local authorities said they do not know how many of the 8,577 people who could have been affected were not given a real vaccine, but advise that all of them get revaccinated as a precaution.

Those who received the shots are all older than 70, German media reported — making them more vulnerable to covid-19, the disease that has killed more than 91,000 people in the country.

Police investigator Peter Beer said at a news conference that there was a “reasonable suspicion of danger” and cited witness statements.

Many expressed shock about the situation, including Ambrosy. “I am totally shocked by this episode,” he wrote on Facebook. He said officials would work to ensure that such an incident would never happen again in the Friesland district.

On Twitter, others branded the health-care worker as “dangerous,” and said that her actions were “appalling.”

This is not the first incident in which vaccine injections went wrong. Earlier this year, a 23-year-old Italian woman was mistakenly given six shots of the Pfizer vaccine by a distracted nurse who officials said “had an attention lapse.” The woman who was given the high volume of vaccine was closely monitored at a Tuscany hospital but did not have any adverse reaction, health authorities said.

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