The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was planning to announce new guidelines this Thursday on what fully vaccinated Americans can do, including allowing for small gatherings indoors with other vaccinated individuals.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a chief medical adviser for the current administration, had previewed the guidance:
“I use the example of a daughter coming in from out of town who is doubly vaccinated, and a husband and wife doubly vaccinated, and maybe a next door neighbor, who you know are doubly vaccinated,” Dr. Fauci said at a White House COVID-19 Task Force press conference Monday.”Small gatherings in the home of people, I think you can clearly feel that the risk, the relative risk, is so low that you would not have to wear a mask, that you could have a good social gathering within the home.”
But after a series of phone calls among administration officials after the trial-balloon preview was shared, the agency is now delaying the announcement.
After a series of meetings and calls with senior officials on the White House’s Covid-19 task force and the Department of Health and Human Services over the last two days, the CDC was told to “hold off on releasing” the recommendations, one of those sources said. The reason is still unclear but one senior administration official said the guidelines were still being finalized.Another official said the CDC had put together the guidelines over the last several weeks and was preparing to go through the final clearance process before the stop was put in place. A new draft of the guidelines was circulated last Friday and then again early this week. Top health officials originally were supposed to sign off on the language Wednesday.A third senior administration official expected that the guidelines would be released “soon.” A fourth said major guidelines on Covid-19 often go through “rigorous deliberations” in the last few days before their release.
It is interesting to note that after Texas and Mississippi joined the 15 states that have no mask mandates, Biden was so upset by the ever increasing freedoms being allowed that he indicated that governors changing their policies are guilty of Neanderthal thinking.
…Biden on Wednesday slammed states that repealed Covid-19 restrictions on businesses and rescinded mask mandates for residents, calling the moves a “big mistake.”Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, both Republicans, announced Tuesday they would allow businesses to reopen at 100% capacity and lift mask mandates. Biden’s remarks were in response to shouted questions from the press specifically about the two states.“Look, I hope everybody’s realized by now these masks make a difference,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “We are on the cusp of being able to fundamentally change the nature of this disease because of the way in which we’re able to get vaccines in people’s arms. … The last thing, the last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking, that, ‘In the meantime, everything’s fine. Take off your mask. Forget it.’ It still matters.”
Perhaps Neanderthal thinking would be appropriate, as it turns out the genetic material inherited via that species is protective against coronavirus.
People who survive a bout of Covid-19 with mild symptoms or even no symptoms may be able to thank their Neanderthal ancestors, a new study suggests.Researchers found a genetic mutation that reduces the risk of severe Covid-19 infection by about 22%. It was found in all the samples they took of Neanderthal DNA, and in about 30% of samples from people of European and Asian origin.The genetic region involved affects the body’s immune response to RNA viruses such as the coronavirus, as well as West Nile virus and hepatitis C virus, the researchers reported Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”This region encodes proteins that activate enzymes that are important during infections with RNA viruses,” they wrote.It may be one of those mutations that has been passed down over the millennia because it helped people survive, Svante Paabo and Hugo Zeberg of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany reported.
It can only be hoped that Biden can achieve a Neanderthal level of reasoning at this point.
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