WP Perspectives – March 7, 2022

FDA Test Recall

Last week's Focus on Facts announcement regarding an at-home test recall was misinterpreted to mean that the tests issued by the U.S. government and mailed to homes were being recalled. That is not true. Please be careful to know which tests are the ones the FDA has identified as those that should be discarded. If you have questions, you should always verify information by going to the source. This notice was shared by the FDA on their social media accounts and webpage.

Why are the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 not named COVID-20 and COVID-21?

This naming system has caused some confusion since the early days of the pandemic. The most important thing to remember is that the Greek letter names and "covid" refer to two separate things.

Delta and Omicron are the names for different variants of the coronavirus itself — the pathogen that infects you and makes you sick.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus and its variants — the collection of symptoms that can include congestion, fever, shortness of breath and so on. It stands for corona ("co") virus ("vi") disease (“d”), with -19 referring to the year it appeared . . .

When new coronavirus variants emerged, the World Health Organization adopted a naming convention for them based on the Greek alphabet. The goal was to create names for each new variant of interest or variant of concern that were easier to say and recall than the longer, more technical scientific names typically used in the laboratory. Health authorities will keep cycling through these names as long as the coronavirus keeps mutating.

The name of the disease won't change as long as the symptoms are generally the same. It's true that COVID-19 caused by Omicron is, for many people, less severe and less likely to result in hospitalization than COVID-19 caused by Delta. But the overall symptoms aren't different enough for health authorities to justify changing the name to, say, COVID-22.   -- Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2022

Click to see more.   -- National Geographic

The Women Who Quieted the World’s Cough

Pearl Kendrick and Grace Eldering are not household names, but the Bordetella pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine they developed has been saving lives since the 1930s.

The 2 women—both bacteriologists with Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health doctorates—produced their first experimental pertussis vaccine in 1933. The perfected version adopted in 1944 is credited with driving pertussis deaths in America down from 7,518 in 1934 to 10 per year by the early 1970s.

Kendrick and Eldering continued to develop prototypes for a combination diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine—precursors of the vaccine that protects ~85% of the world’s children today.  -- Smithsonian Magazine  (Global Health Now)

Franky Franklin - Benjamin Franklin & Inoculation

Learn about Ben Franklin's heart-breaking role in promoting inoculation (vaccination) in this short teaser from Ken Burn's upcoming series on innovation. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unum/playlist/innovation#benjamin-franklin-inoculation

Epidemiology is the science at center of public health.

Disparities in COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage Between Urban and Rural Counties — United States, December 14, 2020–January 31, 2022

According to a CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report dated March 4, 2022, COVID-19 incidence and mortality are higher in rural than in urban communities. Disparities in COVID-19 vaccination coverage between urban and rural communities have been recognized.

COVID-19 vaccination coverage with the first dose of the primary vaccination series was lower in rural (58.5%) than in urban counties (75.4%); disparities have increased more than twofold since April 2021. Receipt of booster or additional doses was similarly low in both rural and urban counties.

Addressing barriers to vaccination in rural areas is critical to achieving vaccine equity, reducing disparities, and decreasing COVID-19–related illness and death in the United States.

51.2  &  25.5
52.7  &  25.2
62.6  &  24.9
43.5  &  21.9

^{cumulative total as of 3/07/22}