Month: January 2022

It's too soon to know if Covid's omicron variant will hasten the end of the nearly two-year-long Covid-19 pandemic. But some experts say that when it comes to contagiousness, omicron could be the "most transmissible the virus can get." The reason: Due to "evolutionary constraints" on how many mutations and changes the virus can make, omicron could be "the ultimate version of this virus," Dr. William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, tells CNBC Make It. Studies show that omicron is more than four times as transmissible as Covid's delta variant, and that it evades immunity better than delta. As long as the virus keeps spreading, Moss says, it'll continue to mutate going forward, creating more ...

For those who suffered side effects following COVID vaccination, the adverse symptoms were likely well worth it — even if they didn’t really have to experience them. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 77% of those who received a vaccine dose from Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson reported at least one non-local symptom soon after the jab, such as headache, fever, fatigue and muscle pain. But a new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Tuesday has revealed that nearly two-thirds of those symptoms were likely self-induced via what researchers are calling the “nocebo” effect. Scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that many volunteers in vaccine control groups — those who unknowing...

**For more on COVID in Ohio, watch below. SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (StudyFinds.org) – Cases of “brain fog” among COVID patients are becoming more and more common, even among people recovering from mild infections. Now, new research is finally providing some potential answers to why people have difficulty concentrating, thinking clearly, and completing easy daily tasks after battling COVID. A team from the University of California-San Francisco say brain fog may result from how the virus alters a person’s spinal fluid — just like other diseases which attack the brain. Two-thirds of COVID vaccine side-effects are just a placebo effect, study says Their study finds certain patients who develop cognitive symptoms following a mild case of COVID-19 display abnorma...

A study of some of the first breakthrough cases of COVID-19 caused by the highly infectious omicron variant found that booster shots of the mRNA vaccines failed to block that strain, although the infections involved only mild or moderate symptoms, confirming they are effective in preventing serious illness and death. The study involved a group of seven Germans visiting Cape Town in South Africa who had the first documented breakthrough cases of COVID between late November and early December after receiving three vaccine doses, including at least two of the mRNA shots developed by Pfizer PFE, +1.12% with German partner BioNTech SE BNTX, -0.71% 22UA, -2.29% or Moderna MRNA, -1.07%. Findi...

Photo: Dragana Gordic (Shutterstock) When you feel a sneeze coming, you build up all this anticipation: you stop talking, the crook of your elbow is raised and at the ready, you have a tissue on hand, and then...nothing. The sneeze is stuck up there. What can you do to force it out? When you really need to clear your nasal passage and get rid of that annoying prickling sensation, it’s possible to trick your body into sneezing. The secret is doing what you can to trigger the trigeminal nerve (more on that below). Here are some tricks that are worth a try for the next time you need to reclaim the sneeze that you deserve. Stick a tissue up your nose The goal here is to stimulate the trigeminal nerve, which sends a message to your brain that it’s high time for sneezing. To do it, roll on...

In news sure to cheer the exhausted parents of toddlers everywhere, the Food and Drug Administration could approve a COVID-19 vaccine for kids under the age of 5 as soon as next month. White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday the FDA is awaiting data from a trial determining the adequate dosage for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. If the data looks favorable, the FDA could sign off in short order. “My hope is that it’s going to be within the next month or so and not much later than that,” Fauci told Blue Star Families, a nonprofit group that helps military families. “But I can’t guarantee that because I can’t out-guess the FDA,” he cautioned. “I’m going to have to leave that to them.” Pfizer said last month it expects to submit the data in the first half of 2022. E...