Coronavirus Daily News Brief – May 23: A Kardashian Tests Positive, Dr. Fauci Under Fire, Free Vaccinations May End for Poor People

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Good afternoon. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on its 1,534th day.
In news we cover today , a senior advisor to Dr. Anthony Fauci is in hot water with a Congressional subcommittee investigating the nation’s pandemic response, free coronavirus vaccinations may end for those who cannot afford them otherwise, and cannabis has replaced alcohol as Americans’ drug of choice.
In addition, we report on a 14-year-old boy who is bedridden due to Long Covid.
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On May 23, 2020, the economic effects of the coronavirus claimed its first major travel company as on Friday as Hertz, the number two car rental agency in the world, filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11.
Brazil became the world’s No. 2 hotspot for novel coronavirus cases on Friday, second only to the United States, overtaking Russia.  Health officials there reported that 332,382 have been infected by the virus as of Friday.
The number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood at 5.3 million, of which 2.16 million have recovered, based on data compiled by Worldometer, a service that compiles and makes available world statistics. The death toll now stood at 340,004.
In the United States and its territories, the number of confirmed cases stood at 1.65 million, while the death toll stood at 97,647. Brazil had the second highest number of cases in the world, with 332,382, with a death toll of 21,116, while Russia had the third highest number, with 326,448 and 3,249 deaths, which officials in the United States continue to believe to be a significant undercount.
LONG COVID
The devastation that Long Covid wreaks has driven more than one family to consider unorthodox and alternative treatments for the condition, even though there is no consensus as to what causes Long Covid and what can be done beyond trying to address some of the symptoms.
The family of 14-year-old Dylan Smith of Easton, Pennsylvania, is considering getting Dylan treated at the Spero Clinic, a chiropractic and holistic medicine practice, in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
There’s no question that Dylan appears to have a particularly severe case of Long Covid. After a second SARS-CoV-2 infection, he became increasingly unable to walk and his family reports that he is now bedridden and requires a feeding tube.
The clinic claims that it can treat “Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS), Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), fibromyalgia, Trigeminal Neuralgia, [and] neuropath (s ic) ,” and is run by its CEO, Katinka Van der Merwe, who only holds credentials as a chiropractor but speaks of her work “in the neurology field.”
“It’s a neurological clinic,” Dylan’s mother, Stacey Smith, told a reporter from WBAL-TV in Baltimore. “They’re treating Long Covid as a neurological disease where they’re healing the body from the inside out and they’re assisting the nervous system, which the nervous system affects every part of your body. It’s finally given us hope. It’s finally giving us hope that our child can get his life back.”
UNITED STATES
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the nation’s pandemic efforts while director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is under fire after House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic reviewed over 30,000 pages of emails and documents from Dr. David Morens, Fauci’s former senior adviser.
A news release from the subcommittee, said that a 35-page memo summarizing the committee’s findings”incriminates Dr. Morens in undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and repeatedly acting unbecoming of a federal employee.”
The program  which provided millions of free Covid vaccinations to low-income people is coming to a end, U.S. health officials said. At the present time, provided it’s not extended further, the Bridge Access Program is set to end in August, months earlier than local health departments and health centers expected. This is because, when pandemic-era funding from Congress for the program will expire then. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is seeking permanent funding so that routine vaccinations can remain free for adults. This would be similar to the Vaccines for Children program, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official told the Daily News Brief  in an e-mailed statement.
Not that this publication wishes to get on the Kardashian bandwagon, but Kourtney Kardashian said on her family’s television show that she tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on the morning of her baby shower, following a six-hour make-out session with her husband, Travis Barker, who had at first tested negative for the virus. Her mother, Kris Jenner, visibly teared up at the revelation.
The family is famous for being famous, in effect, and this started with Robert Kardashian, who died in 2003, who was the National Football League’s star lawyer at the time OJ Simpson was accused of the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994. Kardashian was in the spotlight as OJ’s attorney and had had four children with his first wife, Kris Kardashian, née Houghton, namely Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob. Kris Kardashian then had two more children with her second husband, Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn), Kendall and Kylie.
The television show “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” made celebrities out of otherwise ordinary wealthy people. The show’s rather  self-aware tackiness was evinced in the opening credits as the family was dressed in sequins and satin, standing against a cityscape backdrop. The idea that the family became “famous for doing nothing” is persistent but some family members did masterfully engage in rather impressive entrepreneurship and others married quite well, witness Kim Kardashian, who had become famous over a leaked sex tape but then married rapper and failed presidential candidate, Holocaust denier, and Adolf Hitler admirer Kanye West.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
A new study that was published in the journal Addiction found that cannabis has replaced alcohol as the daily drug of choice for Americans.   The study, which analyzed data from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Found that, in 2022, there were 17.7 million people who reported using cannabis either every day or nearly every day, compared with 14.7 million who reported using alcohol with the same frequency.
Both Moderna and Pfizer are in talks with the federal government over the creation of a potential  avian flu vaccine program, the head of the U.S. government’s pandemic response administration said late Wednesday. The assistant secretary of preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, Dawn O’Connell, said that the vaccines would use messenger RNA technology.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending May 11, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on May 17 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.2%, a figure is up 0.1 percentage points from the previous 7-day period, and the trend in test positivity is -0.1% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.3%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -5.2%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 is no longer being reported as of the end of May. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 0.6%, a figure that is down 14.3%.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine at press time, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information.  So far, 13.58 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 4,189 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.8% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, 2023, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines in any significant number
Finally, as of April 14, 2024, only Turkmenistan in Central Asia is only state that has not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever, although it is strongly suspected that the virus is present there. Meanwhile, the last territory in the world to have its first ever SARS-CoV-2 infection was Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand that reported its first five cases on December 21, 2022.
Where Has All the Data Gone?
We regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated. Over the past 15 months, as more politicians and governments sought to place SARS-CoV-2 in the rear-view mirror, pandemic data reporting sputtered out and we are now at the point where it is simply not feasible to provide statistically valid case data on a global scale.
We are developing potential new and authoritative sources that we will present once they have been properly vetted, so stay tuned to this space. In the meantime, our Long Covid and pandemic coverage will remain much the same.
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Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this issue.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE.  The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.
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