How RFK Jr.’s misguided science on mRNA vaccines is shaping policy − a vaccine expert examines the false claims

 

On Sept. 4, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee, where he is expected to face questions about his vaccine policies.

A few days prior, on Sept. 1, 2025, President Donald Trump demanded pharmaceutical companies to prove that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines work, saying that the CDC was “being ripped apart over this question.” It was his first public acknowledgment of the chaos roiling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez and subsequent resignations of four high-level agency officials.

Meanwhile, public health experts and HHS staffers are calling for Kennedy to be fired.

The turmoil comes about a month after HHS announced US$500 million in funding cuts for 22 research contracts on mRNA vaccine technology. The agency said it will instead pour these funds into research on a traditional approach to designing vaccines that was first used more than 200 years ago. With such vaccines, called whole-virus vaccines, a person’s immune system is presented with the whole virus, often in weakened or inactivated form. This switcheroo has puzzled many scientists.

As a vaccinologist who has studied and developed vaccines for over 35 years, I see that the science behind mRNA vaccine technology is being widely misstated. This incorrect information is shaping long-term health policy in the U.S. – which makes it urgent to correct the record.

Are mRNA vaccines less safe than whole-virus vaccines?

HHS defended its cancellation of mRNA vaccine research based, in part, on a nonpeer-reviewed compilation of selected publications called the COVID-19 mRNA “vaccine” harms research collection. This document lists about 750 articles claimed to describe harms caused by mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. However, the vast majority of these articles aren’t about vaccines but about the harms of getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. And notably absent from it is the huge body of data showing mRNA vaccines actually prevent these harms.

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Spike proteins on SARS-COV-2 can cause tissue damage – and although mRNA vaccines produce them in small amounts, they prevent the virus from replicating to produce them in large amounts. https://www.scientificanimations.com/wiki-images/, CC BY-SA

For example, the document being used to justify RFK Jr.’s claims about mRNA vaccines highlights 375 studies reporting that the virus’s spike protein alone, which is produced when the virus replicates, can cause excessive inflammation and tissue damage. This is true. But the document marshals this evidence to support the claim that mRNA vaccines, which are designed to produce spike proteins, cause the same harm – which is not accurate.

While viral replication results in uncontrolled production of a large amounts of the protein, the way it’s produced by the mRNA vaccine is very different. The vaccine produces a small, controlled amount of spike protein inside a few cells – just enough to induce an immune response without causing damage. And by blocking the virus’s replication, it reduces the amount of spike protein in circulation, actually having the opposite effect.

What about side effects like myocarditis?

Early reports flagged a type of heart swelling called myocarditis as a rare side effect of the mRNA vaccine, particularly for young men ages 18 to 25 after a booster dose. A 2024 review identified about 20 cases out of 1 million people who received the vaccine. However, that same study found that unvaccinated people had an elevenfold higher risk of getting myocarditis after a COVID-19 infection than vaccinated people.

What’s more, another 2024 study showed that people who developed myocarditis after vaccination had fewer complications than those who developed the condition after getting infected with COVID-19.

Do mRNA vaccines make the SARS-CoV-2 virus resistant?

Another claim from the compilation of supposed mRNA vaccine harms that was cited as a reason for cutting funding for mRNA technology is that mRNA vaccines cause mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that make them resistant or less susceptible to the vaccine.

When a virus replicates in its host, it produces millions of copies of its genetic material. Mutations are copying errors that occur naturally during the replication process. These acquired mutations produce new variants, which is why both the COVID-19 mRNA and the whole-virus flu vaccine get updated annually – to keep up with natural changes in the virus.

Slowing down viral replication decreases the rate at which a virus can acquire new mutations. Since both mRNA and whole-virus vaccines stop or slow the virus from replicating, both types of vaccines help reduce the emergence of resistant viruses.

Viruses can mutate to escape from antibodies, but the mRNA vaccines are not causing the emergence of more virulent strains, likely for at least two reasons. First, mRNA vaccines induce immune responses that can attack the virus at multiple spots, so it would have to come up with many mutations at once to escape the vaccine’s defenses. Second, even if the virus could acquire all these mutations, they would likely weaken it, making it unable to cause or even transmit disease.

mRNA vaccines versus new SARS-CoV-2 variants

Kennedy, in announcing cuts to mRNA vaccine research on Aug. 5, 2025, claimed that mRNA vaccines don’t work against respiratory viruses and that HHS was moving toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”

Both whole-virus vaccines and mRNA vaccines protected against COVID-19 and prevented hospitalization and death for millions of people worldwide between 2020 and 2024, but there’s clear evidence that the mRNA-based vaccines provided significantly better protection than whole-virus vaccines. And for COVID-19, mRNA vaccines are more effective against new variants, which emerge as viruses mutate, than whole-virus vaccines.

mRNA vaccines’ superpower is that they can be updated and manufactured very quickly, unlike traditional whole-virus vaccines.

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines started with exceptionally high efficacy, exceeding 94%. When the SARS-CoV-2 delta and omicron variants emerged in the spring and fall of 2021, mRNA vaccines became less effective in preventing infections. However, they remained highly effective in preventing severe illness, whereas in unvaccinated people the rates of severe illness and hospitalization remained high.

This is because mRNA vaccines induce the immune system to make both antibodies and specialized immune cells called T cells. These elements can recognize multiple parts of the virus, including ones that don’t change, enabling significant protection against new variants.

What’s more, the mRNA vaccines have a superpower that no other type of vaccine can currently match: They can be quickly updated and manufactured within two to three months. To develop a whole-virus vaccine, researchers must first spend months isolating and propagating the virus. Conversely, making an mRNA vaccine requires just sequencing the virus’s genetic code – a process that today takes just hours.

If a new pandemic began today, mRNA vaccines are currently the only type of vaccine that could be developed quickly enough to disrupt its spread.

The future of mRNA vaccine technologies

Thirty years ago, when scientists first started developing mRNA vaccine technology, they recognized its potential to overcome major limitations of whole-virus vaccines – namely, slow production time and more limited ability to protect from new viral variants. Today, mRNA vaccines are also being developed to prevent or treat diseases including HIV and cancer, as well as autoimmune and genetic diseases.

Of course, this technology can be further improved. New mRNA vaccine technologies are aimed, among other things, at making mRNA vaccines easier to store to allow for faster distribution and reduce their short-term side effects, eliminate the rare risk of myocarditis and more quickly block a respiratory infection.

The National Institutes of Health is funneling money away from new mRNA technologies toward a single project developing universal vaccines based on traditional whole-virus vaccine technology. Universal vaccines are urgently needed to provide broader protection against ever-changing respiratory viruses, such as influenza, that are major pandemic threats.

A 2022 study in mice and ferrets showed that a universal flu vaccine NIH plans to support has promise. However, multiple studies of potential universal flu vaccines based on mRNA technology show even more potential. Such vaccines could induce broader immunity than whole-virus vaccines by eliciting antibody and T-cell responses that target an even wider range of flu viruses.

It’s hard to square those benefits with the fact that HHS and NIH have named the planned new universal vaccine platform “Generation Gold Standard,” insisting that it represents a new standard in science and transparency. The effort seems more akin to eliminating all e-bike technology and telling everyone who seeks one to get by with a single brand of a 10-speed bike: Getting to the intended destination may still be possible, but it will be slower and harder.

And in the case of abandoning mRNA vaccine research, it may lead to lives needlessly lost, whether due to potential medicines untapped or to pandemic unpreparedness.

-The Conversation

Deborah Fuller, Professor of Microbiology, School of Medicine, University of Washington

"He cannot be President of the United States"

 

We learned from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that in 2020, while he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it. To be clear, this equipment was not the swabs we now use at home, but appears to be what at the time was a new point-of-care machine from Abbott Laboratories that claimed to be the fastest way to test for Covid-19. 

Journalist Karly Kingsley points out that at the time, central lab testing to diagnose Covid-19 infections took a long time, causing infections to spread. Machines like Abbott’s were hard to get. Trump chose to send them to Putin—not to charge him for them, or to negotiate for the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans being held by Russia at the time and later released under the Biden administration, but to give them to him—rather than keeping them for Americans.

It’s hard to overstate just what an astonishing story this is. In 2016, Republicans stood firm against Putin and backed the arming of Ukraine to stand against Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. But that summer, at Trump’s urging, the party changed its platform to weaken its support of Ukraine.

In 2020, it appears, Trump chose to give lifesaving equipment to Putin rather than use it for Americans. And in 2024, Trump’s willingness to undermine the United States to cozy up to an adversary his own party stood against less than a decade ago does not appear to be a deal breaker for Republicans.

As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) put it: “What has this country come to if the revelation that Trump secretly sent COVID testing machines to Putin while thousands of Americans were dying, in part because of a shortage of testing machines here, doesn't disqualify him to be President?” He continued: “Donald Trump helped keep Putin alive during the pandemic and let Americans die. This revelation is damning. It's disqualifying. He cannot be President of the United States.” 

Increasingly, Trump’s behavior seems to parrot the dictators he appears to admire. 

After 60 Minutes called him out for breaking a fifty-year tradition of both candidates talking to 60 Minutes and backing out of an interview to which he had agreed, Trump today accused the producers of 60 Minutes of cutting Vice President Kamala Harris’s answers to make her look good.

He suggested that such cuts were “illegal” and possibly “a major Campaign Finance violation” that “must be investigated, starting today!” “The public is owed a MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY!” he wrote. Trump is trying to cover for his own failure by attacking CBS in an echo of dictators determined to control the media.

In a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to have declined to appear at another presidential debate with Vice President Harris. After declaring he had won the previous debate with Harris and rehashing many of his grievances, he wrote: “THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH!”

As Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post recounted yesterday, a report from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that the Trump White House prevented a real investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.

More than 4,500 calls and electronic messages about Kavanaugh sent to the FBI tip line went directly to the White House, where they were never investigated, and the FBI was told not to pursue corroborating evidence of the accusations by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez although lawyers for the women presented the names of dozens of people who could testify to the truth of their allegations.  

A number of senators said the lack of corroborating evidence convinced them to vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As Steve Benen of MSNBC recalled, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said at the time that it appeared to be “a very thorough investigation,” while the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the 2018 FBI report “looks to be a product of an incomplete investigation that was limited perhaps by the White House.”

After he left office, Trump told author Michael Wolff that he had gone to bat for Kavanaugh, saying: “I…fought like hell for Kavanaugh—and I saved his life, and I saved his career.” Kavanaugh was the crucial vote for Trump’s right-wing agenda, including ending the federal recognition of abortion rights by overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Ken Bensinger reported in the New York Times today that Trump’s team has refused to participate in preparations for a transition to a potential Trump presidency. Normally, the nonpartisan transition process, dictated by the Presidential Transition Act, has candidates setting up teams as much as six months before the election to begin vetting and hiring political appointees and working with the administration in office to make sure the agencies continue to run smoothly. 

With the election less than a month away, Trump has neither signed the required agreements nor signed the transition’s ethics plan that would require him to disclose private donors to the transition and limit them to contributions of no more than $5,000. Without that agreement, there are no limits to the money the Trump transition can take. Trump has also refused to sign an agreement with the White House requiring that anyone receiving classified information have a security clearance. Currently, his aides cannot review federal records.

Trump ignored the traditional transition period in 2016, cutting off communications with President Barack Obama’s team. He refused to allow incoming president Joe Biden access to federal agencies in 2020, hampering Biden’s ability to get his administration in place in a timely fashion. Now it’s possible that Trump sees no need for a normal transition because Project 2025, on which he appears to be relying, has been working on one for many months. 

It calls for him to fire most federal employees, reinstating the policy he started at the end of his term. To fill their positions, the Heritage Foundation has been vetting loyalists now for months, preparing a list of job candidates to put in place a new, right-wing agenda.  

Yesterday, on California’s KFI radio station, Trump told host John Kobylt that Tom Homan of Project 2025, who as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversaw the family separation policy at the southern border, will be “coming on board” a new Trump administration. 

This afternoon, Trump told an audience in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that he expects to put former rival Vivek Ramaswamy into an important position in his administration. On October 7, 2024, Ramaswamy suggested on social media that he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare.

He wrote: “Shut down the entitlement state & you solve most of the immigration problem right there. We need to man up & fix the root cause that draws migrants here in the first place: the welfare state. But no one seems to want to say that part out loud, because too many native-born Americans are addicted to it themselves.”

Trump has expressed frustration with the independence of the Federal Reserve, expressing a desire to make it answer to the president. In an interview with Barron’s, one of his advisors, Scott Bessent, has floated the idea of creating a shadow Fed chair until the term of the current chair, Jerome Powell, ends, thus undercutting him without facing a fight over firing the Fed chair. 

This agenda is not a popular one in the U.S., but Trump is getting a boost as Russian operatives work to swing down ballot races toward the Republicans. In a briefing on Monday, October 7, experts from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters that China and Iran are trying to influence the upcoming election and that “Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the U.S. public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians.

Russian influence actors have planned, and likely created and disseminated, content, particularly over social media, intended to encourage the election of congressional candidates that Moscow assesses will oppose aid to Ukraine.”  

Russia, an ODNI spokesperson said, uses “influence-for-hire firms, or commercial firms with expertise in these type[s] of activities.” It also coopts “witting and unwitting Americans to work on Russia’s behalf,” to “launder their influence narratives through what are perceived as more authentic U.S. voices.” 

Not all of Trump’s supporters appear eager to stick around to see if Trump will win another term. Today news broke that Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive officer of OverStock, who became a fervent advocate of the idea that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election, has left the country, apparently permanently, to live in Dubai.

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Byrne, as is President Biden’s son Hunter. The younger Biden sued Byrne for defamation last November after Byrne claimed Hunter Biden sought a bribe from Iran. 

In September, Biden’s lawyers were trying to schedule a date for Byrne’s deposition when his lawyer abruptly “claimed for the first time that Defendant has moved his residence to Dubai and if Plaintiff wanted to take his in-person deposition counsel would have to fly to Dubai to do so, to which Plaintiff responded with various related inquiries to try to resolve this matter and defense counsel stated Defendant would not be returning to the United States for the foreseeable future.” 

Byrne claimed to have fled the U.S. because the Venezuelan government has put a bounty on him, but as Biden’s lawyers note, “the Defendant’s truthfulness is directly at issue.” 

—Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-03-27-Abbott-Launches-Molecular-Point-of-Care-Test-to-Detect-Novel-Coronavirus-in-as-Little-as-Five-Minutes

https://www.state.gov/briefings-foreign-press-centers/2024-elections-fpc/30-day-election-security-update-from-intelligence-community

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/us/politics/trump-presidential-transition.html

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-commentary/2024/07/project-25-and-your-federal-job-better-read-up-on-this-one/

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-says-project-2025-author-coming-onboard-if-elected-1966334

https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-fed-chair-powell-fire-4b79079f

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/kavanaugh-trump-white-house-fbi-report/

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/justice-kavanaugh-becomes-latest-target-trump-s-ire-n1273851

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/new-allegations-kavanaughs-fbi-probe-spark-awkward-questions-rcna174652

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-sues-overstock-ceo-patrick-byrne-defamation-joe-biden/

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.904869/gov.uscourts.cacd.904869.67.2.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/us/politics/republican-president-2024-heritage-foundation.html

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The Long-Term Effects of Covid, iPhones, Games and Social Media on Students/Children

I promised that I would share some of the responses to my invitation to teachers to share their observations about the lingering effects of the Covid years. I haven’t heard from a lot of teachers which is hardly a surprise during this energy- and time-consuming start up period in the school year. I know I would get a better yield by contacting specific teachers, but I’d rather not impose on anyone right now.

Marcus was one of the early teachers in our charter school, stretching way back to 1999. I’m delighted to know that he’s still at it. Here’s his response:

"I’m curious if you have done a piece on effects of smart phones and games/social media. I’m sure there are issues from covid but the issues from smart phones and devices I believe are exponentially bigger. Our school just implemented a no phone policy where kids have to store their phones in pouches all day (minus lunch) and so far, it’s been amazingly successful. Kids are once again talking to each other. Laughing with each other. Playing with each other and not just glued to a screen. The irony doesn’t escape me as I send this glued to a screen. I worry at times that effects of Covid can be a cover up for the effects of cellphone and devices. I even have a working theory that major league baseball batting averages are at an all-time low due to cellphone gaming and social media with the players."

No one can contest Marcus’s contention that smart phones and devices have had a profound impact on students – academically, socially and emotionally – and that perhaps some of what’s blamed on Covid is actually caused by those infernal but invaluable machines. I would say in response that it’s not either/or but both/and, particularly as you move up the age ladder. You can’t blame the phones on what we’re seeing in the early grades because the kids who were 2 or 3 hadn’t been exposed to them yet, for the most part.

I can’t resist commenting on Marcus’ baseball connection. I look at those statistics pretty regularly and have been puzzled by the fact that only 3 National League players are batting over .300. Purists will cite the proliferation of 100 mph fastballs, but who’s to say that locker room time on devices might be the cause.

Devorah is a dear friend.  She’s not a teacher, but she’s one of the most astute observers of kids that I know:

"You probably read or heard about Anya Kamenetz’s book 'The Stolen Year' about students and COVID—it is a good one on this topic. I think the effects on teachers are also worth thinking about—so many left the profession. And the missing on-boarding times for important 'extra' things—Harold (ed: her now high school-age son) missed 6th grade which is when many kids start an instrument at school. The high school band teacher told me they are still way down in their numbers.

"The richest people kept their kids in sports and music lessons but everyone else got totally screwed. And the decline in school enrollment with people who never went back is going to reverberate for years…. I will say, one of the most impressive things about Harold’s HS orientation was the art and band leaders making their plea to give it a try and 'it’s not too late.' As someone starting banjo lessons at 49, it is funny to hear that 14-year-olds think it is “too late” for anything, but the reality is many budding musicians and athletes are well on their way by then."

There are a number of interesting points in Devorah’s message. First, the delayed effect of the missed sixth grade start of musical instrument instruction is such a perfect example of the kind of land mines laid down by Covid that only make themselves known later, in this case in high school band programs. And who knows what effects will become evident even later, in the adult years.

Devorah also touches on another potentially cataclysmic event resulting from some students’ Covid school experience. The online learning without any direct human interaction didn’t work for many young people and led them to drop out of high school or college. There’s a lot of centrifugal force in such an action that propels you away from your original course. It’s not an easy trajectory to reverse. Talk about life-changing! The aggregated result of such action by significant numbers of people might surface decades from now in unaccountable data about education, employment, earnings, etc. Thank you, Devorah.

Finally, my former student Mari, who is now inspiring her own students at the University of Illinois, sent me a link to a story that appeared online at the New York Times.  Research shows that a phenomenon called cortical thinning accelerated dramatically, especially for girls, during Covid. Under normal circumstances this is a natural maturing process that, as I understand it, involves a realignment and consolidation of brain cells, but a rapid acceleration of the process – it was happening more than four times faster for girls than for boys – is associated with depression and anxiety.

One explanation for this discrepancy is that girls are much more dependent on their interactions with peers and those were severely curtailed during Covid. Many observers have noted the rise in depression and anxiety in young people, although, truth to tell, that process was already under way long before Covid. Here we need to acknowledge that Marcus’s point about the effects of screen time could be the real culprit here.

There are a lot of questions raised by this research, but the fact that there are measurable changes in brain structure that may be related to the Covid years opens many avenues of speculation about the hidden effects of that period that may surface in the distant future.

I’m still hoping to hear from teachers at all grade levels about what they’ve observed that may be attributable to experiences – or the lack thereof – during those dark years. And I don’t want to ignore one of Devorah’s other reminders to pay attention to the effects of those years on teachers themselves, including the many who left the profession as a result of the stress of that period. We need to hear more about that too.

PS. I have the book, "The Art of Screen Time," by Anya Kamenetz that Devorah recommended on order at the library. You might want to check it out too.

-Marv Hoffman

Research suggests COVID-19 affects brain age and IQ score

 

From the very early days of the pandemic, brain fog emerged as a significant health condition that many experience after COVID-19. Brain fog is a colloquial term that describes a state of mental sluggishness or lack of clarity and haziness that makes it difficult to concentrate, remember things and think clearly.

Fast-forward four years and there is now abundant evidence that being infected with SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – can affect brain health in many ways.

In addition to brain fog, COVID-19 can lead to an array of problems, including headaches, seizure disorders, strokes, sleep problems, and tingling and paralysis of the nerves, as well as several mental health disorders.

A large and growing body of evidence amassed throughout the pandemic details the many ways that COVID-19 leaves an indelible mark on the brain. But the specific pathways by which the virus does so are still being elucidated, and curative treatments are nonexistent.

Now, two new studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine shed further light on the profound toll of COVID-19 on cognitive health.

I am a physician scientist, and I have been devoted to studying long COVID since early patient reports about this condition – even before the term "long COVID" was coined. I have testified before the U.S. Senate as an expert witness on long COVID and have published extensively on this topic.

How COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain

Here are some of the most important studies to date documenting how COVID-19 affects brain health:

• Large epidemiological analyses showed that people who had COVID-19 were at an increased risk of cognitive deficits, such as memory problems.
• Imaging studies done in people before and after their COVID-19 infections show shrinkage of brain volume and altered brain structure after infection.
• A study of people with mild to moderate COVID-19 showed significant prolonged inflammation of the brain and changes that are commensurate with seven years of brain aging.
• Severe COVID-19 that requires hospitalization or intensive care may result in cognitive deficits and other brain damage that are equivalent to 20 years of aging.
• Laboratory experiments in human and mouse brain organoids designed to emulate changes in the human brain showed that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers the fusion of brain cells. This effectively short-circuits brain electrical activity and compromises function.
• Autopsy studies of people who had severe COVID-19 but died months later from other causes showed that the virus was still present in brain tissue. This provides evidence that contrary to its name, SARS-CoV-2 is not only a respiratory virus, but it can also enter the brain in some individuals. But whether the persistence of the virus in brain tissue is driving some of the brain problems seen in people who have had COVID-19 is not yet clear.
• Studies show that even when the virus is mild and exclusively confined to the lungs, it can still provoke inflammation in the brain and impair brain cells' ability to regenerate.
• COVID-19 can also disrupt the blood brain barrier, the shield that protects the nervous system – which is the control and command center of our bodies – making it "leaky." Studies using imaging to assess the brains of people hospitalized with COVID-19 showed disrupted or leaky blood brain barriers in those who experienced brain fog.
• A large preliminary analysis pooling together data from 11 studies encompassing almost 1 million people with COVID-19 and more than 6 million uninfected individuals showed that COVID-19 increased the risk of development of new-onset dementia in people older than 60 years of age.

Autopsies have revealed devastating damage in the brains of people who died with COVID-19.

Drops in IQ

Most recently, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine assessed cognitive abilities such as memory, planning and spatial reasoning in nearly 113,000 people who had previously had COVID-19. The researchers found that those who had been infected had significant deficits in memory and executive task performance.

This decline was evident among those infected in the early phase of the pandemic and those infected when the Delta and Omicron variants were dominant. These findings show that the risk of cognitive decline did not abate as the pandemic virus evolved from the ancestral strain to omicron.

In the same study, those who had mild and resolved COVID-19 showed cognitive decline equivalent to a three-point loss of IQ. In comparison, those with unresolved persistent symptoms, such as people with persistent shortness of breath or fatigue, had a six-point loss in IQ. Those who had been admitted to the intensive care unit for COVID-19 had a nine-point loss in IQ. Reinfection with the virus contributed an additional two-point loss in IQ, as compared with no reinfection.

Generally the average IQ is about 100. An IQ above 130 indicates a highly gifted individual, while an IQ below 70 generally indicates a level of intellectual disability that may require significant societal support.

To put the finding of the New England Journal of Medicine study into perspective, I estimate that a three-point downward shift in IQ would increase the number of U.S. adults with an IQ less than 70 from 4.7 million to 7.5 million – an increase of 2.8 million adults with a level of cognitive impairment that requires significant societal support.

Another study in the same issue of the New England Journal of Medicine involved more than 100,000 Norwegians between March 2020 and April 2023. It documented worse memory function at several time points up to 36 months following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test.

Parsing the implications

Taken together, these studies show that COVID-19 poses a serious risk to brain health, even in mild cases, and the effects are now being revealed at the population level.

A recent analysis of the U.S. Current Population Survey showed that after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an additional 1 million working-age Americans reported having "serious difficulty" remembering, concentrating or making decisions than at any time in the preceding 15 years. Most disconcertingly, this was mostly driven by younger adults between the ages of 18 to 44.

Data from the European Union shows a similar trend – in 2022, 15% of people in the EU reported memory and concentration issues.

Looking ahead, it will be critical to identify who is most at risk. A better understanding is also needed of how these trends might affect the educational attainment of children and young adults and the economic productivity of working-age adults. And the extent to which these shifts will influence the epidemiology of dementia and Alzheimer's disease is also not clear.

The growing body of research now confirms that COVID-19 should be considered a virus with a significant impact on the brain. The implications are far-reaching, from individuals experiencing cognitive struggles to the potential impact on populations and the economy.

Lifting the fog on the true causes behind these cognitive impairments, including brain fog, will require years if not decades of concerted efforts by researchers across the globe. And unfortunately, nearly everyone is a test case in this unprecedented global undertaking.

Ziyad Al-Aly is chief of research and development at VA St. Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

     

The CDC Reports an increase in Covid by Fred Klonsky

 

My personal measure of Covid cases is echoed in the official numbers. The CDC reports an increase. My Facebook feed shows it too. Every day I see at least one post from someone showing a picture of their positive test result.

 

One of my very good friends in Los Angeles called to say he got hit for the first time ten days ago. His wife was taken down a few days later. Other friends who have evaded the virus for nearly three years have succumbed to it this summer.

 

None have died. None have been hospitalized. But many who are my age are at higher risk for both. Even those who got Covid a year or more ago can get it again. Like me, for example.

 

I got a mild case last year and a bad one again a couple months ago while traveling. Getting Covid while on the road can be rough. We always take a test kit with us and thanks to Paxlovid, telemedicine and a kindly owner of B and B, my isolation was manageable.

 

What’s changed?

 

When Joe Biden officially ended the Covid emergency last May, American healthcare reverted to form. The form being profit above all else. Testing, for example, is no longer free. Covid testing isn’t even covered by most insurance. Major insurers no longer pay for over-the-counter tests once Biden ended the emergency declaration. The Biden administration has stopped mailing test kits to households. The ones you saved may have expired.

 

We now have to decide if buying the $12 test (if we can find one) is worth it. The costs quickly add up for larger families and for people who’ve contracted covid intent on protecting others by following federal guidelines to test repeatedly to end isolation and masking.

 

It is true that now most covid infections are mild but still are a greater danger to the elderly and severely immunocompromised.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 9,000 covid-19 hospital admissions in the week ending July 29, a 12.5 percent increase from the week before. But that’s far below the nearly 45,000 admissions recorded the same week a year ago. 

 

The percentage of emergency department patients diagnosed with covid-19 has risen gradually in July but is less than a fifth of where it was a year ago. Covid is now being treated like the annual flu.

 

It is now just the normal cost of being sick in America. But in our for-profit healthcare system, unique in the industrialized world, that’s no bargain.

 

Fred Klonsky in Retirement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

https://fredklonsky.substack.com/p/covid-uptick-were-on-our-own?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

 

 

Meet Dr. Kariko

 

Katalin Karikó, PhD, is a biochemist and researcher, best known for her contributions to mRNA technology and the COVID-19 vaccines. Karikó and co-collaborator Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, invented the modified mRNA technology used in Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infection.

More than 15 years ago at Penn Medicine, Karikó and Weissman found a way to modify mRNA and later developed a delivery technique to package the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles. This made it possible for mRNA to reach the proper part of the body and trigger an immune response to fight disease.

These laboratory breakthroughs made mRNA safe, effective, and practical for use as a vaccine against COVID. The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine received FDA approval in August 2021, and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized by the FDA for emergency use.

Karikó is a senior vice president at BioNTech and an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and began collaborating with Weissman in 1997.

Karikó received her bachelor's degree in biology in 1978 and her doctorate in biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Szeged in her native Hungary. She was working at the Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged before immigrating to the United States in 1985.

Research

Description of Research Expertise

Dr. Katalin Karikó’s research has for decades focused on RNA-mediated mechanisms, with the ultimate goal of developing in vitro-transcribed mRNA for protein therapy. She investigated RNA-mediated immune activation and co-discovered (with Penn Medicine colleague Drew Weissman) that nucleoside modifications suppress the immunogenicity of RNA, which has widened the therapeutic potential of mRNA in treating diseases. This led to the development of the two most effective vaccines for COVID-19, the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and holds vast promise for future treatments of many other diseases. Dr. Karikó was recently honored with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Princess of Asturias Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Excellence in Biotechnology. She continues to work on new therapeutic applications of mRNA therapy.

Selected Publications

Krienke, C, Kolb, L, Diken, E, Streuber, M, Kirchhoff, S, Bukur, T, Akilli-Öztürk, Ö, Kranz, LM, Berger, H, Petschenka, J, Diken, M, Kreiter, S, Yogev, N, Waisman, A, Karikó, K, Türeci, Ö, and Sahin, U: A noninflammatory mRNA vaccine for treatment of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis Science 371 (6525): 145-153,2021.

Hotz, C, Wagenaar, TR, Gieseke, F, Bangari, DS, Callahan, M, Cao, H, Diekmann, J, Diken, M, Grunwitz, C, Hebert, A, Hsu, K, Bernardo, M, Karikó, K, Kreiter, S, Kuhn, AN, Levit, M, Malkova, N, Masciari, S, Pollard, J, Qu, H, Ryan, S, Selmi, A, Schlereth, J, Singh, K, Sun, F, Tillmann, B, Tolstykh, T, Weber, W, Wicke, L, Witzel, S, Yu, Q, Zhang, YA, Zheng, G, Lager, J, Nabel, GJ, Sahin, U, and Wiederschain, D: Local delivery of mRNA-encoding cytokines promotes antitumor immunity and tumor eradication across multiple preclinical tumor models Science Translational Medicine 13 (610): eabc7804,2021. Sahin, U, Muik, A, Derhovanessian, E, Vogler, I, Kranz, LM, Vormehr, M, Baum, A, Pascal, K, Quandt, J, Maurus, D, Brachtendorf, S, Lorks, V, Sikorski, J, Hilker, R, Becker, D, Eller, AK, Grutzner, J, Boesler, C, Rosenbaum, C, Kuhnle, MC, Luxemburger, U, Kemmer-Bruck, A, Langer, D, Bexon, M, Bolte, S, Karikó, K, Palanche, T, Fischer, B, Schultz, A, Shi, PY, Fontes-Garfias, C, Perez, JL, Swanson, KA, Loschko, J, Scully, IL, Cutler, M, Kalina, W, Kyratsous, CA, Cooper, D, Dormitzer, PR, Jansen, KU, and Tureci, O.: COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b1 elicits human antibody and TH1 T cell responses Nature 586 (7830): 594-599,2020. Karikó, K., Muramatsu, H., Welsh, FA., Ludwig, J., Kato, H., Akira, S., Weissman, D.: Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA yields superior nonimmunogenic vector with increased translational capacity and biological stability Molecular Therapy 16 : 1833-1840,2008. Karikó K, Buckstein M, Ni H, Weissman D.: Suppression of RNA recognition by Toll-like receptors: the impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA Immunity 23 (2): 165-75,2005.

Academic Contact Information

BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals
An der Goldgrube 12
Mainz, D-55131

 

"It is not students and teachers who are failing the test of this pandemic, but a political and economic system that puts profit over people"

 

This school year, as teachers carefully construct unit plans, build community with students, and navigate ongoing staff shortages, they also have to contend with a barrage of media coverage catastrophizing about so-called “learning loss.”

Headlines suggest the losses are “historic,” “devastating,” and that students are “critically behind.” This fearmongering comes not only from the political right; there is a dangerous liberal-conservative consensus. 

President Biden’s Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, said: “I want to be very clear: The results in today’s Nation’s Report Card [delivered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress] are appalling and unacceptable.” 

The learning loss narrative shrouds itself in moment-in-time data from standardized tests, but it is not really about this moment. Rather, it is a weapon wielded against the past, to shift blame for pandemic school closures, and against the future, to narrowly frame the policy choices ahead. 

The last few years have negatively impacted — sometimes terribly — young people’s lives. In what is likely an undercount, more than a million people in the United States have died of COVID-19. And the pandemic is not over; people in our students’ families continue to become debilitated or die.

Each lost life is a thread in the tapestry of relationships that knit together families, communities, neighborhoods, and schools. The very groups that make up the bulk of public-school families — people of color and poor folks — also disproportionately bear the burden of the pandemic, suffering the highest rates of infection, severe illness, hospitalization, and death. 

Was the shuttering of schools and move to remote learning necessary? Yes. Did it exacerbate the emergency for families and young people? Of course. Schools matter. Schools are hubs of community and care, and without them we are all worse off. 

In a country that offers no public childcare to families, schools make it possible for parents and caregivers to work. In a country in which roughly 10 percent of the population struggles with hunger — again, disproportionately represented in public schools —schools make it possible for children to eat.

And yes, schools are places where children learn: to read, multiply, and sing; to be a good friend and community member; to ask questions and seek answers — how photosynthesis works, what activists mean when they call themselves “water protectors,” and so much more.

Given the importance of schools, and the magnitude of the pandemic’s devastation, what is puzzling is not that students’ academic skills were impacted, but that anyone would imagine otherwise. We are almost three years into an ongoing health crisis that has shaved years off the average life expectancy in the United States. Of course it has left marks on us. 

But the learning loss narrative does not invite reflection on the whole range of collective losses we’ve suffered, nor does it encourage asking why our government — and our political and economic system — failed so spectacularly in anticipating, planning for, and coping with the coronavirus. 

Shifting blame away from the for-profit healthcare system and the government’s response to the coronavirus is part of what makes the learning loss narrative so valuable to politicians who have no interest in challenging existing patterns of wealth and power. It is a narrative meant to distract the public and discipline teachers.

Here’s the recipe: 1. Establish that closing schools hurt students using a narrow measure like test scores; 2. Blame closure of schools on teacher unions rather than a deadly pandemic; 3. Demand schools and teachers help students “regain academic ground lost during the pandemic” — and fast; 4. Use post-return-to-normal test scores to argue that teachers and schools are “failing”; 5. Implement “teacher-proof” (top-down, standardized, even scripted) curriculum or, more insidiously, argue for policies that will mean an end to public schools altogether. 

The path ahead looks eerily like what Naomi Klein has called the “shock doctrine,” where powerful actors, like politicians, corporate tycoons, and pundits, use people’s disorientation following a collective shock — whether a devastating earthquake or a deadly pandemic — to push pro-business, neoliberal policies. 

The Washington Post quoted a statement from former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos that the pandemic test scores proved children were “hostages” in a “one-size-fits-none system that isn’t meeting their needs.” Her solution, of course, is what she has long pushed: more “school choice” and privatization.

The Biden administration has offered some respite from billionaire free market fanatics like DeVos, but its policies are woefully inadequate. (See “Activists Mobilize for Waivers and Opt Outs as Biden Mandates Tests” in the Spring 2021 issue.) 

The latest iteration of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund allocated a relatively generous $122 billion to “help safely reopen and sustain the safe operation of schools and address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the nation’s students.” 

But the law prioritizes speed — schools must spend all of the money by 2024 or forfeit it — over investments in teachers, counselors, school librarians, and nurses. Many school districts cannot quickly fill positions or, knowing that the federal windfall is only short-term, choose not to.

According to Marianna McMurdock, a staff reporter at The 74, a recent survey of 291 district leaders found that districts are expanding hiring of substitutes, paraprofessionals, and tutors while shying away from hiring full-time teachers and lowering class sizes — reforms that would have more impact on student learning and better inoculate schools from the overcrowded classrooms that made shuttering schools necessary. 

We know what comes next — a round of dismal math and reading scores and the right’s favorite chestnut: “See? Just throwing money at schools doesn’t work.” Schools are racing to spend short-term government funds before they run out.

But the point is that adequate funding for schools should never run out. Tripling Title I funding, a Biden campaign promise popularized by Bernie Sanders, would only cost one-fiftieth of the $1.5 trillion in wealth U.S. billionaires have added to their fortunes during the pandemic. Truly confronting the many losses students in the United States have shouldered requires connecting the dots to the gains of the wealthy.

The learning loss drumbeat reveals the mainstream media to have more contempt than curiosity about what might actually improve schools’ long-term health. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, writing in The New Yorker, is an exception. Noting the recent teacher strikes in Columbus and Seattle, Taylor wrote: 

“A real plan for recovery from the devastation of the pandemic in public education can be found in the strikes initiated by teachers and their unions. Their demands — for smaller class sizes, better conditions within school buildings, more resources to attend to students’ mental health, and higher pay for teachers and teacher assistants — have created a map for how to boost learning achievement.”

This pandemic has brought real losses, and like our friends in Seattle and Columbus, we know what schools need to help students heal from the traumas of the last several years: more teachers, counselors, and nurses; smaller class sizes; planning time for educators to develop curriculum and pedagogical strategies centering students’ lives and realities; beautiful spaces to learn, make art, garden, and play. 

Let’s not fall for the learning loss trick that shifts blame from the catastrophic results of decades of disinvestment in public goods to the victims of that catastrophe and those organizing to recover from it. It is not students and teachers who are failing the test of this pandemic, but a political and economic system that puts profit over people.  

-The "Learning Loss" Trap by the editors of Rethinking Schools:

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-learning-loss-trap/