By Amber Dance

The emergency ends but COVID’s consequences will linger 

President Joe Biden abruptly ended the national COVID-19 emergency last Monday, a month early and with little fanfare, after Congress forced his hand.

The public health emergency, which enables free COVID testing, vaccines and treatment as well as a controversial border policy that allowed expulsion of immigrants requesting asylum, remains in place until its planned expiration May 11.

The national emergency measures, now ending, included a federal mortgage forbearance program and the suspension of home visits for veterans seeking caregiver assistance. 

Today’s America certainly looks much more normal than the empty streets and child-free classrooms of spring 2020. But a majority of Americans say the pandemic is ongoing, and only about a third have fully returned to pre-pandemic habits. 

More than 200 people are still dying of COVID in the U.S. every day, and the disease remains deadlier than the flu.

Older Americans and immunocompromised individuals remain vulnerable, and while they may be given access to another booster shot soon, improved vaccines are likely years away. 

And there’s still the possibility of a novel variant causing a new wave of illness and death, writes Troy Farah at Salon. Even so, current surveillance systems are not up to snuff, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris told him.

While some are already seeking to forget the trauma of the early pandemic, for others the trauma is ongoing. 

That includes COVID orphans and widows, as well as the one in 13 adults struggling with the complex collection of symptoms known as long COVID.

“Long COVID, though slower to command attention, has since become its own emergency, never formally declared,” wrote Katherine J. Wu at The Atlantic in February. “For the millions of Americans who have been affected by this condition, their relationship with the virus does not seem to be in a better place.”

The government recently released an outline of its progress in responding to long COVID, but the advances are “underwhelming,” notes Betsy Ladyzhets at the COVID-19 Data Dispatch. 

Scientists are still puzzling out what causes long COVID, though evidence is building for one hypothesis: that some of the virus sticks around in the body, causing the ongoing symptoms. 

The NIH’s flagship RECOVER initiative to study long COVID has been the target of criticism by frustrated patient groups dissatisfied with its ponderous pace and the lack of additional funding from Congress.

Many people with long COVID struggle to pay for the care they need, according to a new study in JAMA Network Open.

Obtaining disability benefits is also a challenge, reports Larry Buhl at Capital & Main. 

“With cognitive issues, it’s so much harder to get through long forms,” a long COVID sufferer named Marie told Buhl. “It’s death by paperwork.”

Drug companies seeking to treat long COVID are also searching for funding, reported Max Bayer in February at Fierce Biotech. 

“Unlike our earliest responses to acute COVID, there is no ‘Operation Warp Speed’ for long COVID,” write emergency physician Dr. Esther K. Choo and business professor Scott Duke Kominers in a letter to Scientific American. “Our failure to address long COVID guarantees the pandemic will continue.”

White House announces new round of vaccine funding

The Biden administration is pledging at least $5 billion to speed up the development of new coronavirus vaccines in an operation termed “Project Next Gen.”

While it’s not as much as the $18 billion spent on the first round of COVID vaccines under Operation Warp Speed, “this is a substantial allocation that should make a difference,” Dr. Eric Topol writes in his Ground Truths newsletter.

Project Next Gen, like Warp Speed, will partner with private companies to accelerate development of coronavirus vaccines and treatments.

While the first generation of COVID vaccines was a remarkable achievement that saved more than 3 million lives in the U.S. alone, those technologies were designed to work quickly in an emergency, not to produce the best vaccines for ongoing use.

Current vaccines are “really good, but they’re not great,” epidemiologist Michael Osterholm told USA Today’s Karen Weintraub. Their efficacy wanes over time, and their ability to ward off infections has decreased with the arrival of newer variants. 

Vaccines that prime the immune system in the nose, to block the coronavirus right where it enters the body, are one Next Gen priority. 

For example, researchers in Germany recently reported a COVID-19 nasal vaccine, based on a weakened version of the virus, that prevented transmission and created a much stronger immune response than an mRNA vaccine — in hamsters, anyway.

“It doesn’t take much to get the nasal vaccine across the goal line,” Topol told Dan Diamond at The Washington Post. 

It remains to be seen how effective nasal COVID shots would be. Nasal flu shots are little better than injected ones, Weintraub notes. “It’s seriously naïve to believe that it will be easy to make one,” immunologist John Moore told her.

Another goal of this latest federal push is to create vaccines that produce broader immunity, against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2 — the virus behind COVID-19 — or even against other kinds of coronaviruses such as those behind past SARS and MERS outbreaks, or something new that might emerge.

The current mRNA vaccines are based on just one viral protein, the spike, which is constantly mutating. 

A universal or “pan-coronavirus” vaccine would raise immunity against multiple coronavirus spikes or other proteins that don’t change so much, but it could take years to develop, Diamond reports.

The third Next Gen priority is to develop antibodies, used to treat coronavirus infections, that won’t be quickly turned obsolete by new variants. 

After Congress turned a deaf ear to the White House’s request for more funding to fight the coronavirus, the administration pulled money previously allocated for testing and other projects to fund Next Gen.

Meanwhile, the FDA is planning a fall booster campaign using the current slate of vaccines, and choosing the right formula to match circulating variants will be a challenge, the agency’s Dr. Peter Marks told the World Vaccine Congress.

Marks and others expressed concern that the pandemic has undermined people’s confidence not just in coronavirus vaccines, but vaccines overall, reports MedPage Today’s Washington correspondent Shannon Firth.

Marks is now focusing his organization’s attention on “those who want to have their lives saved.”

Pandemic pushed marginalized communities to the edge

The coronavirus crisis laid bare the vulnerabilities of underserved communities in myriad ways and pushed some of those living on the edge right over.

The latest CDC data indicate that, compared to white people, Black people were 60% more likely to die of COVID, Hispanic or Latino people were 70% more likely to die, and American Indian or Alaska Native people were twice as likely to die.

Life expectancy for American Indians and Alaska Natives dropped by six and a half years due to the pandemic, according to a 2022 report, despite high vaccination rates in Indigenous communities. 

Inequities in access to treatments has been a major theme of the pandemic as well. People of color who contracted COVID were less likely than whites to receive Paxlovid, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported last fall.

While Asian Americans were less likely to be infected or die than white people, many suffered violence and other hate crimes due to racism and grossly misplaced blame over the pandemic’s origins.

LGBTQ individuals reported worse physical health and financial status during the early pandemic, compared to cisgender, heterosexual people.

Women often bore the brunt of the sudden switch to homeschooling during lockdown, suffering more significant job losses and a slower return to work than men.

Yet there have been some bright spots. Health workers have learned how to better reach out to underserved communities. 

And emergency aid measures were so effective, poverty rates dropped.

For example, the town of Stockton, California, gave residents $500 a month, reports Megan Cerullo at CBS News, with resulting improvements to both physical and mental health among recipients.

The extra money helped residents recover from COVID and other medical issues without worrying about their paychecks, as well as get to work or seek better employment. 

But the end of the federal emergency declarations will undo enhanced benefits related to Medicaid and food stamps, endangering society’s most vulnerable individuals anew. For journalists, there will be ample story opportunities moving forward in what these cuts to benefits mean for struggling families.

This will not be the last pandemic, and we’re underprepared

Even as the worst of COVID fades into the rearview mirror, a future pandemic remains a very real threat.

Every time people encroach on wild places, seeking wild meat to eat or a new place to live, it offers animal pathogens the opportunity to try our biology on for size.

Even now, bird flu lurks in poultry, killing a woman in China last week, but hasn’t yet managed to jump from person to person. 

Drug-resistant superbugs are swirling in Los Angeles’ sewers; the CDC is warning U.S. physicians to look out for the Marburg virus; and even fungi could become a bigger threat to human health.

“As horrible as COVID has been — it remains one of the leading causes of death in the United States — it is not the worst-case scenario,” warned Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, in an opinion essay for The New York Times last month. 

The Black Death in the 14th century and the 1918 flu pandemic killed more people than COVID. 

Bird flu, Ebola and the Nipah virus are all deadlier than the coronavirus, Inglesby notes. They just haven’t yet evolved the ability to spread quickly by way of human breath. 

And the next pandemic virus, known ominously to the World Health Organization as “Disease X,” could require a different response than COVID did, The Times notes. 

“We need to prepare to fight disease outbreaks just as we prepare to fight fires,” Bill Gates wrote last month in The New York Times. “The world needs a well-funded system that is ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice when danger emerges.”

Some efforts are underway by the WHO, World Bank, and United Nations. 

And the pandemic has made wastewater surveillance much more common, potentially providing a net to capture new threats.

But international leaders have largely failed to create a full-scale pandemic preparedness system, Liberia’s former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf wrote in Time. 

For example, the U.S. Congress directed the White House to create a permanent pandemic readiness office in December, but the office is nowhere to be found, even as the Biden administration closes down its COVID response team, reports Rachel Cohrs at STAT.

“2023 should not be remembered as the year the world moved on from COVID,” wrote Sirleaf, “but rather the year the world’s leaders seized the opportunity to apply lessons of the past toward ensuring a healthier future.”

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Across most of America, GameStop is just a place to buy a video game. On Wall Street, though, it’s become a battleground where swarms of smaller investors see themselves making an epic stand against the 1%.

The funds serving the financial elite are starting to walk away in defeat. Big bets they made that GameStop’s stock would fall went wrong, leaving them facing billions of dollars in collective losses. All the wild action pushed GameStop’s stock as high as $380 on Wednesday, up from $18 just a few weeks ago.

The stunning seizure of power gives some validation to smaller-pocketed investors, many of whom are encouraging each other on Reddit and are trading stocks for the first time thanks to brokerages offering free-trading apps. It’s also left more investors on Wall Street asking if the stock market is in a dangerous bubble about to pop, as AMC Entertainment, Bed Bath & Beyond and other downtrodden stocks suddenly soar as well. The S&P 500 set a record high earlier this week, though it fell Wednesday.

Two investment firms that had placed bets for money-losing GameStop’s stock to fall have essentially thrown in the towel. One, Citron Research, acknowledged Wednesday in a YouTube video that it unwound the majority of its bet and took “a loss, 100%” to do so. But Andrew Left, who runs Citron, said that does not change his view that GameStop’s stock will eventually go down.

“We move on,” Left said. “Nothing has changed with GameStop except the stock price,” He also said he has “respect for the market,” which can run stock prices up much higher than where critics say they should be, at least for a while.

Melvin Capital is also exiting GameStop, with manager Gabe Plotkin telling CNBC that the hedge fund was taking a significant loss. He denied rumors that the hedge fund will fail. The size of the losses taken by Citron and Melvin are unknown.

Before its recent explosion, GameStop’s stock had been struggling for a long time. The company has been losing money for years as sales of video games increasingly go online, and its stock fell for six straight years before rebounding in 2020.

That pushed many professional investors to make bets that GameStop’s stock will decline even further. In such bets, called “short sales,” investors borrow a share and sell it in hopes of buying it back later at a lower price and pocketing the difference. GameStop is one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street.

But its stock began rising sharply earlier this month after a co-founder of Chewy, the online seller of pet supplies, joined the company’s board. The thought is that he could help in the company’s transformation as it focuses more on digital sales and closes brick-and-mortar stores. Its shares jumped to $19.94 from less than $18 on Jan. 11. At the time, it seemed like a huge move for the stock.

Smaller investors were meanwhile exhorting each other online to keep GameStop’s stock rolling higher.

The raucous discussions are full of sarcasm, self deprecation and emojis of rocket ships signifying belief that GameStop’s stock will fly to the moon.

“WHAT IS AN ACTUAL RATIONAL SELLING POINT, (ABOVE 200? 500?) SO I DONT HAVE TO WATCH THIS TICKER EVERY SECOND UNTIL FRIDAY/MONDAY????” one user wrote in a Reddit discussion Tuesday afternoon as GameStop soared. “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING,” adding that they had other things to do.

There is no overriding reason why GameStop has attracted this cavalcade of smaller and first-time investors, but there is a distinct component of revenge against Wall Street in communications online.

“The same rich people that caused the market crash in 2007/08 are still in power and continue to manipulate the market to get even richer, we are just taking back our fair share,” one user wrote on Reddit.

“hey mom i can’t come up for dinner,” another user wrote. “i’m bankrupting a 10 figure hedge fund with the boys.”

Beyond personal attacks, the battle has also created big financial losses for Wall Street players who shorted GameStop’s stock.

As GameStop’s gains grew and short sellers scrambled to get out of their bets, they had to buy shares to do so. That accelerated the momentum even more, creating a feedback loop. As of Tuesday, short sellers of GameStop were already down more than $5 billion in 2021, according to S3 Partners.

Much of professional Wall Street remains pessimistic that GameStop’s stock can hold onto its immense gains. The company is unlikely to start making big enough profits to justify its $22.2 billion market valuation anytime soon, analysts say. The stock closed Wednesday at $347.51. Analysts at BofA Global Research raised their price target Wednesday — to $10.

All the mania is raising some concern that investors are taking excessive risks, and reporters asked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday whether the Fed’s moves to support markets through the pandemic is helping to push stock prices too high.

Powell downplayed the role of low interest rates and pointed to investors’ expectations for COVID-19 vaccines and more stimulus from Washington for the economy as drivers for record stock prices.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday that it’s noticed all the volatility in the market, though it did not name GameStop specifically. The agency said it’s “working with our fellow regulators to assess the situation and review the activities” of investors in the market.

Later Wednesday, the Reddit discussion group where much of the GameStop stock push has taken place, called r/WallStreetBets, was taken private, making it inaccessible to outsiders. Some longtime users also took to Twitter to say they could no longer access it. A Reddit representative confirmed that the group’s moderators took it private but gave no other comment.

In addition, the gamer-friendly platform Discord shut down a text and audio chat group also called r/WallStreetBets for “continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings,” the company said in a statement.

Discord said it has been monitoring that group — called a “server” for historical reasons — for “some time” due to repeated violations of its rules, including hate speech, glorifying violence and spreading misinformation and issued multiple warnings to its administrator.

“To be clear, we did not ban this server due to financial fraud related to GameStop or other stocks,” Discord said. “We are monitoring this situation and in the event there are allegations of illegal activities, we will cooperate with authorities as appropriate.”

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Fifty students in the Inland Empire will receive medical school scholarships this academic year thanks to the Healthcare Scholarship Fund (HSF) from Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP).

In an effort to address the physician shortage in the Inland Empire, IEHP has awarded $8 million in funding to three local universities and programs, including Loma Linda University School of Medicine, University of California Riverside, and the California University for Science & Medicine (CUSM).

This funding will allow each institution to independently manage scholarship applications and distribute funds directly to students. While the application process varies between institutions, IEHP requires a commitment from scholarship recipients to practice and serve in the Inland Empire for 5 years after graduation.

“We hope these scholarships will not only encourage and incentivize local students to reach their dreams of becoming doctors, but to stay and practice medicine in the Inland Empire as well,” said Jarrod McNaughton, IEHP Chief Executive Officer. “We’d like to be the bridge between dreams and action for students who dedicate their hearts to the field of medicine and do all we can as a health plan to provide students with a supportive network of healthcare professionals.”

According to the California Health Care Foundation, the Inland Empire has one of the lowest ratios of Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) and specialty physicians per 100,000 people in California. “Removing the barrier of debt for these students allows for increased dedication to the field and a way for us to work together to address the physician shortage in our two counties,” said McNaughton.

“I am grateful to IEHP for engaging with us to continue to expand access to care and healthcare provider options for our region,” said Dr. Tamara Thomas, Loma Linda University School of Medicine Dean. “By removing financial barriers, the Inland Empire Community Service Awards will make it possible for more of our students to follow their dream to serve the medical needs of our underserved communities.”

IEHP Contact

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RIVERSIDE (CNS) – The Board of Supervisors has directed the Emergency Management Department to accept a $1.8 million federal grant to cover a range of costs directly tied to Riverside County’s coronavirus mitigation efforts.

In a 5-0 vote without comment, the supervisors Tuesday approved the allotment, which will be disbursed by the California Department of Public Health and is among the grant awards made available under the Coronavirus Preparedness & Response Supplemental Appropriations Act signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 6.

“This one-time funding is intended to reimburse the county for COVID- 19 crisis response for the period March 5, 2020, through March 15, 2021,” according to an Executive Office statement posted to the board’s agenda. “The funding is critical support from the federal government to assist in the response to the ongoing pandemic.”

Almost 1,000 county residents have been infected with the virus so far, resulting in 25 deaths. There have been 60 documented patient recoveries, according to the Riverside University Health System.

The grant will cover costs stemming from resource obligations, supply acquisitions, including surgical gloves and masks, equipment acquisitions, including ventilators, and the procurement of food and basic office implements, according to the EMD.

The funds will be paid based on submissions from the county to the state showing specific measures that have been put into effect, officials said.

A spending plan must be forwarded to the state by Thursday detailing the county’s current and future expenditures for “early crisis response,” “surge management,” “biosurveillance” and other actions. Officials said the process is already underway.

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RIVERSIDE (CNS) – The Board of Supervisors is slated next week to direct the Emergency Management Department to accept a $1.8 million federal grant to cover a range of costs directly tied to Riverside County‘s coronavirus mitigation efforts.

The allotment, which will be disbursed by the California Department of Public Health, is among the grant awards made available under the Coronavirus Preparedness & Response Supplemental Appropriations Act signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 6.

“This one-time funding is intended to reimburse the county for COVID- 19 crisis response for the period March 5, 2020, through March 15, 2021,” according to an Executive Office statement posted to the Board of Supervisors’ agenda. “The funding is critical support from the federal government to assist in the response to the ongoing pandemic.”

Almost 500 county residents have been infected, resulting in 14 deaths as of Thursday, according to the Riverside University Health System.

The grant will cover costs stemming from resource obligations, supply acquisitions, including surgical gloves and masks, equipment acquisitions, including ventilators, and the procurement of food and basic office implements, according to the EMD.

The funds will be paid based on submissions from the county to the state showing specific measures that have been put into effect. A spending plan must be forwarded to the state by April 9 detailing the county’s current and future expenditures for “early crisis response,” “surge management,” “biosurveillance” and other actions, according to documents.

Officials said that the process is already underway.

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