Half...

 

Moderna is urging the US Food and Drug Administration to authorize a half-size booster of its Covid-19 vaccine, according to a briefing document posted Tuesday, ahead of a key meeting of the agency's vaccine advisers.

The company is asking for authorization for a 50-microgram booster dose -- half the size of the 100-microgram doses used in the primary series of the two-dose vaccine. The company says halving the dose increases protection against the coronavirus while helping the worldwide Covid-19 vaccine supply.

The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is meeting this week to consider booster doses of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines. The FDA previously authorized boosters of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for some adults.

Executive...

 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that President Biden has signed 15 executive actions, part of a flurry of steps he plans to take in the coming days to address his top policy priorities — and to roll back some of former President Donald Trump's initiatives.

Are we suffering with his decisions?

CZAR...

 

Better...

 

Plenty...

 

Myself...

 

Outlook...

 

Goldman Sachs is becoming increasingly pessimistic about the US economy as coronavirus support from the government phases out and consumer spending remains on an uncertain path.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street bank downgraded its forecast for America’s economic growth, which is closely monitored by the investment community.   It’s the second time Goldman Sachs has revised its 2021 forecast lower in two months.

 Two main factors drove  this outlook. 

One is that Covid-19 relief programs are set to wind down "significantly" through the end of the year, eliminating a source of income for some households.

The other concern is that consumers are not doling out enough money on services to compensate for a drop in spending on goods.

Fly...

 Southwest Airlines canceled more than 1,800 flights this weekend, disrupting the travel plans of thousands of customers and stranding flight crews, blaming the meltdown on a combination of bad weather, air traffic control and its own shortage of available staff.

The airline blamed initial problems on bad weather and an “FAA-imposed air traffic management program.”

“Although we were staffed for the weekend, we could not anticipate the significant disruption that was created from unexpected ATC issues and bad weather across our Florida stations,” said Kasher.

The Federal Aviation Administration said there were a “few hours” of flight delays on Friday afternoon because of severe weather and staffing issues at Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center, which controls airspace in five parts of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Staffing huh, some got fired. Just a thought.

Diet...

 

For those with Alzheimer's disease, there's a tell-tale sign in the brain. Amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles appear as an early signal of what's to come.

But recent research has shown that these physical changes to the brain may not be the sole drivers of the disease, and that something as simple as diet could change our cognitive resilience to dementia in the future.

A higher MIND diet score was associated with better cognitive functioning prior to death. That was the case even when adjusting for those that had no cognitive impairment when the research started, or those diagnosed with Alzheimer's in a post mortem due to the presence of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.

The MIND diet was created to help prevent dementia and slow the loss of brain function that can happen with age. It encourages its followers to consume vegetables, berries, nuts, whole grains, olive oil, fish, beans, poultry and wine.

Expectation...

 

COVID-19 vaccines won't eliminate the coronavirus, "no matter how many booster shots the United States gives," Céline R. Gounder writes for The Atlantic.

Grounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital in New York City, thinks public health messaging got out of hand early on during the vaccine drive. After that, folks got excited, believing that full vaccination status meant you could only very rarely get infected or transmit the disease. But now that the efficacy appears to be lower, there's a lot of anxiety.

Grounder tried to ease that, explaining that vaccines are typically more effective at protecting against infection outright when battling viruses that have longer incubation periods, like measles and smallpox. 

In those cases, the body is trained to kick the virus out before it can really establish itself. But the coronavirus and influenza, for example, don't take as long to start replicating and can do so before a vaccinated defense system revs up. 

Once it does, though, the virus doesn't have much room to operate and is usually blocked from progressing in the lungs and causing serious damage.
With that in mind, Grounder says Americans simply need to "recalibrate our expectations about what makes a vaccine successful."