Recently, Kamala Harris returned to her home state of California.
Instead of a tan or a t-shirt, she went back to DC with covid.
….Kamala Harris can’t seem to catch a break. Every unsettling laugh or awkward monologue becomes a viral video. A buzzy book out next week, “This Will Not Pass,” portrays her role in the Biden administration as slight, despite promises she would be an influential vice president.So last week, she went to California to recharge. She came back a day early only to test positive for the coronavirus.
Reports indicate Harris is vaccinated and boosted…twice. So that is four vaccinations in total. She is asymptomatic and hasn’t been in “close contact with Biden.”
Harris has been working from the Naval Observatory, where an official said Tuesday she would isolate.”The vice president remains asymptomatic. She is feeling good and has been in touch with staff and working. We are taking all necessary steps to ensure her continued health,” the official said.Harris tested positive for Covid-19 ahead of meetings at the White House Tuesday morning, and is not considered a close contact of President Joe Biden. Harris had been scheduled to receive her intelligence briefing at the White House alongside Biden, but tested positive on a rapid test and a PCR test ahead of that meeting. She did not participate in any events or meetings at the White House on Tuesday, according to a White House official.
As part of her treatment, Harris has the covid antiviral pill, Pfizer’s Paxlovid. Under conditions of the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization standards, eligibility for doses are flexible but reserved mainly for people “at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19.”
It’s a pill designed to keep high-risk Covid patients out of the hospital, reducing their risk of serious illness by as much as 90 percent.Developing a more severe case of Covid is more likely in people 50 and over. Harris is 57.’Today, after consultation with her physicians, the Vice President was prescribed and has taken Paxlovid,’ the press secretary stated close to 8 p.m. on Tuesday.The vice president’s press secretary said she was ‘not been a recent contact’ to President Joe Biden or First Lady Jill Biden ‘due to recent travel schedules.’If she completes the full therapy Harris will have to take a regiment of three pills twice a day for five days.
One wonders why an asymptomatic, low-risk, healthy individual requires doses of Paxlovid, which may have been better directed to a high-risk individual if supplies are limited.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist who’s also editor-at-large for public health at Kaiser Health News. She said the FDA’s reference to “high risk” for progression to severe disease in its Paxlovid fact sheet suggests a patient can be asymptomatic at time of diagnosis and still be eligible for the drug.“We know that the way that presidents, or in this case vice presidents, are treated is not necessarily the way the average person is treated,” added Gounder, who advised the Biden transition on Covid-19. “It’s not just about what is best for that patient – it’s about what’s best for the nation.”…Harris’ speedy access to Paxlovid sharply contrasts with the rest of the country’s ability to get it. The sheer logistics of finagling a prescription, and then finding the pills within days of symptom onset, has complicated the drug’s rollout after it was first authorized in December.Only physicians, physician assistants and certain registered nurses — not pharmacists — can prescribe the drug. That means patients may have to visit a testing site, a doctor’s office and, in the worst-case scenario, visit a participating pharmacy just to get the pills.
We wish Harris a speedy recovery. Perhaps she has learned a valuable lesson about tying virtue to vaccination status.
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