Coronavirus Daily News Brief – June 11: KP.3 is the New Dominant Variant in U.S., Cuomo Grilled on Capitol Hill Over Nursing Home Deaths

An empty Times Square, an area usually bustling with tourists, during the height of the pandemic in N.Y.C.
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 1,553rd day.
In news we cover today , former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was grilled on Capitol Hill on Tuesday about decisions made during the pandemic concerning nursing home patients, the KP.3 variant is now dominant in the United States, and a new combination vaccine from Moderna that protects against both Covid and influenza works showed greater efficacy than a standalone vaccine for either.
THE LEDE
How the Transmogrification of Merely Incompetent Research Can Fuel Conspiracy Theories Beyond One’s Wildest Dreams: The Case of the Shoddy BMJ ‘Excess Deaths’ Paper and What the Data Really Said
If there were ever a competition for scientific papers that should not have seen the light of day, one that would stand a good chance of winning carries the title, “Excess Mortality Across Countries in the Western World Since the Covid-19 Pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ Estimates of January 2020 to December 2022,’”which appeared in the British Medical Journal, a highly respected organ first  published in 1840 as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal.
The paper questioned why excess deaths in Western countries remained unusually elevated during the pandemic even after vaccines were introduced in early 2021 and the implication was quite clear: Rather than reducing cases and deaths, the vaccines had resulted in a significant increase, somewhat akin to the recent research that suggests that a major shift in global shipping regulations intended to improve air quality may have temporarily –  and inadvertently – set off a geoengineering reaction that is warming the planet.
This is the finding that was embraced by the Telegraph and, thanks to the miracle of telegraphic technology, also by the New York Post. Since then, the anti-vaccine camp has gleefully foisted this finding on an unsuspecting and somewhat ignorant public.
Indeed, on the topic of ignorant, no less than Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate in the United States and a known anti-vaxxer, promoted the study’s “findings” on his campaign website.
There’s just one small problem – well, okay, perhaps not so small: There is no truth to this so-called finding, nor is there any validity to the anti-vaccine camp’s interpretation of the BMJ paper. Some fairly eminent researchers are loudly suggesting that it never should have been published, while others are demanding a retraction.
One critic in particular, Ariel Karlinsky, an Israeli economist and statistician who developed the World Mortality dataset and whose data comprised the core of the paper by Saskia Moskert, Marcel Hoogland, et al. Karlinsky is, to put it mildly, hopping mad.
Karlinsky has written that the BMJ should retract the paper and “open an inquiry into what happened there with editors and reviewers” [presuming there might have been some, that is].
Stuart MacDonald, a respected actuary who has studied this type of data, referred to the story as “the awful BMJ excess deaths article.”
It’s important to remember how dangerous disinformation in public health can be.
In early June, in these pages, albeit in the U.S. Pandemic News section, mention was made of a new study published in the journal Science, which found that truthful yet misleading Facebook posts did more to drive vaccine hesitation than outright fabrication.
The study, entitled “Quantifying the Impact of Misinformation and Vaccine-Skeptical Content on Facebook,” looked at factually accurate yet deceptive content and its effect on the vaccine decision-making process.
While content that was flagged by fact-checkers received only 8.7 million views in the period covered by the study, some 0.3% of vaccine-related content, while stories that were not flagged but still implied that vaccines were harmful, such as the story of a young, healthy individual who died after receiving the vaccine – many from credible news sources – were viewed hundreds of millions of times.
The researchers at the University of Pennsylvania  and Massachusetts Institute of Technology found vaccine-skeptical content reduced vaccination intention by 2.28 percentage points per Facebook user, compared with −0.05 percentage points for flagged content—a 46-fold difference.
In this case, the transmogrification of the BMJ-published paper, which makes reference to “serious concerns” about the impact of vaccinees and “containment measures” such as lockdowns on excess deaths into a headline that read “Covid Vaccines May Have Helped Fuel Rise in Excess Deaths” is exactly what these researchers were talking about, and if Tom Lehrer were still writing his pithy satirical ditties, he’d no doubt have titled one, “Transmogrification.”
Of course, once the fox is out of the bag and the cat is out of the henhouse, none of this really matters as the damage has been done. As I am often fond of saying, and forgive me, dear reader, for quoting myself: “It’s just spilt milk under the bridge.”
Any questions?
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On June 11, 2020, the World Health Organization reported that the number of coronavirus cases in Africa haddoubled over the past 20 days. “It took 98 days to reach the first 100,000 cases and only 19 days to move to 200,000 cases, so even though these cases in Africa account for less than 3% of the global total, it’s clear that the pandemic is accelerating,” the organization said in a statement.
Pharmaceutical company Regeneron, which is based in Tarrytown, New York, said it was starting a clinical trial of an antibody cocktail that it has developed to prevent and treat Covid-19. The company will test the product in four groups including patients hospitalized with the virus, individuals who are infected and have symptoms but are have not been hospitalized, members of groups such as health care workers at a high risk of infection, and individuals who have been exposed to someone who has the virus.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, the leader of the country’s task force on the coronavirus, drew controversy Wednesday when he posted a photo of a large group of people that are part of the reelection campaign staff at a meeting in Virginia albeit without face masks or social distancing.  The cap on gatherings in Virginia is ten people. The tweet has since been deleted.
Germany reported a record plunge in exports in April.  Exports were down by 31.1%, compared to the same period one year prior, the steepest decline since the data was first published in 1950, the Statistisches Bundesamt said. Shipments of German goods to France were down by 48.3% year over year, while exports to the United States and to Italy were lower by 40.1% and 35.8% respectively.
Meanwhile, the City of New York said it will donate $3 million to establish a revival fund for “mom and pop” restaurants and small businesses that have been impacted by the pandemic. The fund will provide grants of up to $30,000 to up to 100 restaurants.
Finally, the number of cases in the United States crossed the two million mark Thursday. Across the globe, over 7.4 million cases have been confirmed and the global death toll stood at 420,000, although the most interesting statistic the Coronavirus Morning News Brief noted that day was that the number of positive SARS-Cov-2 cases in the city of Indian Mumbai had surpassed those reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of the virus outbreak.
UNITED STATES
Yet another omicron sublineage is starting to dominate SARS-CoV-2 cases in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The CDC said it is track the new sub-variant KP.3 as it spreads across the country..
“[The] CDC is tracking SARS-CoV-2 variant KP.3,” CDC spokesman Rosa Norman said in a statement. “For the two-week period ending on June 8, 2024, [the] CDC predicts that KP.3 is growing and will become the most common SARS-CoV-2 lineage nationally.”
For the two-week period ending June 8, CDC dataa shows that KP.3 accounted for 25% of SARS-CoV-2 cases in the United States and has become the dominant variant. The previous dominant variant was the JN.1 subvariant, which began to spread globally last winter.
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was grilled by a House of Representatives sub-committee investigating his handling of SARS-CoV-2 in nursing homes at the height of the pandemic.
Cuomo was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a closed-door interview with the House select subcommittee investigating the pandemic.
The discussion topic focused on his March 25, 2020, executive that restricted nursing homes from refusing to admit or readmit residents “solely based on confirmed or suspect[ed] diagnosis of COVID-19.”
While it’s not a novel idea that a virus can cause or accelerate cancer, there has been a noticeable uptick in aggressive, late-stage cancers since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. This trend has been confirmed by some early national data and reports from a number of large cancer institutions and some wonder if SARS-CoV-2 is to blame.
One example is what one practice in South Carolina found, namely multiple cases of cholangiocarcinoma, the Washington Post recently reported. This is a rare and lethal cancer of the bile ducts that typically strikes people in their 70s and 80s. Another unusual development has been multiple patients who are contending with multiple types of cancer at the same time.
It may take years to unravel the puzzle, if at all, and there is currently no real-world data that links cancer with SARS-CoV-2.
More people by far get flu shots than coronavirus vaccine jabs. It’s therefore good news to the public health sector that an experimental Moderna vaccine that protects against both influenza and SARS-CoV-2 performed better than either stand-alone flu or Covid shots in a  large trial, the drugmaker said on Monday.
A better flu shot that also protects against SARS-CoV-2 could have the effect of upending the vaccine market if the new vaccine withstands regulatory scrutiny.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
An external panel of advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration endorsed donanemab, a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease. In clinical trials, the medication modestly slowed cognitive decline in patients in the early stage of the disease but the drug does come with some risks: It has been known to cause swelling and bleeding in the brain.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending June 1, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on June 7 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 4.45%, and the trend in test positivity is +0.4% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.5%, and the trend in emergency department visits is +16.2%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 was 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 remains unchanged over the past three weeks.
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 8,187 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
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