Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: What's The Data On Covid Shots For Kids Under 5?; Steps To End Omicron
Bloomberg: Can The FDA Get It Right On Covid Vaccines For Young Kids?
An advisory committee will meet next week to discuss whether the Food and Drug Administration should authorize Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for children younger than 5. To be more specific, they will meet to discuss data — data that no one but Pfizer and the FDA has yet seen — on the first two doses of what will probably be a three-shot series for those kids. (Lisa Jarvis, 2/7)
The Washington Post: What The Omicron Covid Wave Taught Us
Thankfully, the omicron wave is easing, and much of the United States is now on the downward slope. This was the fifth wave of the pandemic, and if we have learned anything, it is that relaxing restrictions should be calibrated to local conditions. Tempers are frayed, face masks annoying and patience short, but the trick of downhill is to avoid reckless abandon. While deaths are terribly high, omicron infections are tumbling. New daily cases in the United States are the lowest since Dec. 12, and the seven-day average, while still high at about 300,000, has dropped 23 days in a row. Covid hospitalizations are falling, too. These indicators do not mean the pandemic is over, but it is headed in the right direction. (2/7)
Newsweek: When It Comes To Masks, The CDC Is Its Own Worst Enemy
Critics, pundits and social media accounts jump to accuse Joe Rogan of spreading COVID misinformation when he interviews experts who utter even a syllable with which they disagree. Yet they seem reluctant to call out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for doing much worse. The CDC spread what amounts to misinformation in its promotion of cloth masks, which countless medical experts have said are useless against Omicron, the dominant COVID-19 variant in the United States. (Jason Rantz, 2/8)
