Category: Brief Messages or Announcements

University of Iowa Hospitals Information on Omicron-Specific Covid-19 Vaccine Booster

The University of Iowa Hospital & Clinics has information on the facts and expected availability of the new bivalent Omicron Covid-19 vaccine boosters.

CDC ACIP Meeting Today and Tomorrow: Covid-19 Vaccine Omicron Bivalent Booster Candidates

The CDC ACIP will meet today and tomorrow about the Covid-19 Vaccine Omicron Bivalent Booster candidates from Pfizer and Moderna. A vote is expected this afternoon.

Update: The committee voted by a majority to upvote the approval of the Pfizer and Moderna bivalent boosters this afternoon. There was one dissenting vote because there was no clinical data to present. There was a clinical study using the bivalent vaccine booster, but results would not have been available until November or December.

However, there was a complicated statistical predication model which showed that if the boosters were rolled out this month, many thousands of hospitalizations and deaths could be prevented as opposed to waiting a few more months. That got prioritized in order to approve the boosters now rather than wait for the clinical study results.

There was a lot of concern about the packaging of the boosters resembling other boosters which might lead to mistakes in administration. Pfizer has a booster vial that looks very similar to that of their bivalent Omicron booster, unless you closely read the tiny print on the vial which says it’s BA.4/BA.5.

The committee voted to cancel tomorrow’s meeting since they completed the goal today.

FDA Authorizes Bivalent Covid-19 Vaccine Booster Dose Today

The FDA announced the EUA authorization this morning of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Bivalent Omicron Covid-19 Vaccine Booster Dose.

CDC-ACIP meeting starts tomorrow for evaluation of the booster doses.

CDC ACIP Meeting for September 1-2 on Bivalent Omicron Covid-19 Vaccine Boosters

The CDC ACIP have an agenda posted indicating that the advisory committee will discuss Covid-19 Bivalent Omicron vaccine candidates on September 1-2, 2022. A vote is scheduled on September 1, 2022.

59th Anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech on August 28, 1963

Sena reminded me that today is the 59th Anniversary of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. After she reminded me about it, I found this anniversary mentioned in only a few headlines on the web.

But that’s no excuse. It doesn’t matter that I was just a small child on August 28, 1963. And when I hear the speech, it still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

CDC Study of High-Contact & Surface Contamination in Household of Persons with Monkeypox Virus Infection

The CDC study, “High-Contact Object and Surface Contamination in a Household of Persons with Monkeypox Virus Infection-Utah June 2022″ was published as an early release on August 19, 2022 in the MMWR. See the link below for the full article.

Pfeiffer JA, Collingwood A, Rider LE, et al. High-Contact Object and Surface Contamination in a Household of Persons with Monkeypox Virus Infection — Utah, June 2022. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. ePub: 19 August 2022. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7134e1.

Deer Sport Fashion Camouflage After Hard Rain

The night of August 19, 2022 some loud thunderstorms rolled through our area. The next day we saw deer in our backyard with a lot of weeds stuck all over their coats. The doe and her two fawns (which we frequently see) were covered with the stuff. One of the fawns looked like it was wearing a weedy hat.

I compared it to pictures on the web and it looks similar to Virginia Stickseed (Beggar’s Lice), a common wildflower in Iowa. I’m not sure though; I’m definitely no botanist.

On the other hand, Beggar’s Lice tends to be pretty common where the deer population is dense—because they won’t eat it.

Maybe the loud storms scared them into running through the burr weed patches.

Update August 25, 2022: Here’s a picture I took yesterday of the deer after a week. They’re still festooned with Beggar’s Lice.

Art in the Iowa City Parks

We went for a walk today in a couple of different parks recently. We were looking for the new art works that have been placed recently. We saw HOOPla in Mercer Park by Tim Adams and Succulent Bloom by Mike Sneller at Terry Trueblood Recreation Area. You can read more about art in the park in the Little Village magazine.

HOOPla happened to have a Chinese mantis on it. Sena thought it was part of the sculpture at first when seeing it from a distance. Then it moved.

We didn’t get to see all of the new art pieces, but plan on it soon.