Rice University in Houston, Texas, announced last week that the first two weeks of the fall semester would be moved online because of a high number of COVID-19 cases among students. It now says the data the decision was based upon were flawed.

In an Aug. 22 letter to the campus community, Rice’s Vice President for Administration Kevin E. Kirby said “anomalies” in the initial testing data prompted the university to retest dozens of students deemed positive for COVID-19, and “all but one of those have turned out to be negative.”

According to the letter, Rice started to ramp up its testing program on Aug. 13 with three different test providers and conducted about 4,500 tests over 9 days with initial results showing 81 positive results. This positivity rate of 2 percent, although much lower than that of the city of Houston, Kirby said in the letter, was still concerning enough that the university officials delayed the start of in-person classes.

“For Rice, a 2 percent rate would be significantly higher than our historical positivity rate of 0.24 percent over the last year when we ran about 150,000 tests,” Kirby said. “This unusual campus positivity rate prompted us to take quick action and assume a more cautionary posture until we could determine whether there was a significant risk of widespread infection.”

Rice began investigating the results when it realized that over 90 percent of the positive infections came from a single test provider, and most of those cases involved people who reported no symptoms or had been fully vaccinated. It turned out that the provider had changed its testing protocol without the university’s knowledge.

“Then we retested about 50 people who initially tested positive. Each of them was tested two additional times, on two different days, by two different test providers, and all but one came back negative,” Kirby wrote, adding that the university released students who were falsely determined to be COVID-19 positive from isolation.

Rice officials said they’ll stick to two weeks of online classes, considering that many of the students and faculty had already adjusted their plans based on that schedule. But students who were told to delay moving on campus until after Sept. 3 can now move in as soon as they want.

“Our commitment is to be fast, flexible, and nimble responding to anything involving the safety of individuals and the overall health of our community,” the letter reads. “We recognize and regret that these testing anomalies have caused tremendous difficulties for all involved.” . . .

[Epoch Times]

In France, the vaccine mandate has been extended from health care workers to other professions. But as the mandate deadline approaches, some military service members and firemen are speaking out against it.

The chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee defied State Department guidelines by traveling to France this month. That didn’t stop him from lecturing Americans about the importance of following federal health and safety protocols.

“We all have to do our part to crush this virus,” Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D., N.Y.) wrote on Aug. 14, in the middle of his maskless European vacation. “Get your shot, wear a mask, and follow CDC guidelines. It’s just the right thing to do.”

A Washington Free Beacon investigation of the Instagram accounts of Maloney and his husband, Randy Florke, found that the power couple’s trip in France was in violation of U.S. health and safety guidelines. The State Department’s website is unequivocal: “Do not travel to France due to COVID-19.”

While in France against the advice of the U.S. government, the congressman appeared to exercise little to no caution against the coronavirus. His Instagram stories included footage from a wedding at the Villa et Jardins Ephrussi de Rothschild, which is outside of Nice on the Mediterranean coast. None of the guests were wearing masks. The bride is a longtime ally of Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance (D.), who declined to prosecute sex criminal Harvey Weinstein.

Maloney and his husband also traveled to Italy, even though the State Department has recommended that Americans “reconsider travel” to the country because of COVID-19. Once again, the couple did not do their part to “crush the virus,” as they were photographed without masks at an indoor art studio in Puglia.

After he returned to the United States, the congressman traveled to Napa Valley for a Democratic fundraiser that featured House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. Donors paid as much as $29,000 for tickets to the élite soirée. Servants were fully masked; Maloney and the other guests were not.

The fundraiser took place near the French Laundry, the luxury restaurant where Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) was infamously busted for violating his own COVID-19 guidelines by attending a maskless dinner party in Nov. 2020.

Maloney’s trips come at a perilous time for elected Democrats, many of whom spent the summer engaging in the sort of activities they have sought to discourage among the general population. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), for example, was caught dancing without a mask at an indoor wedding, in violation of county guidelines, on the same day she attacked Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) for criticizing COVID-19 restrictions.

Earlier this month, former president Barack Obama threw himself a massive birthday party at his $17.5 million estate on Martha’s Vineyard. Several weeks after the super-spreader event, the island’s only hospital is struggling to cope with the surge in patients testing positive for the so-called Obama variant of of the deadly virus. . . .

As the number of breakthrough COVID cases continues to climb, there is growing concern fully vaccinated people may be more vulnerable to serious illness than previously thought — and some fully vaccinated people now sick with the virus are speaking out.

According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 9,716 breakthrough cases resulting in hospitalization or death as of Aug. 16. However, the agency states those numbers are underreported. On May 1, the CDC made a decision to stop tracking all breakthrough cases and instead only track cases in the fully vaccinated that resulted in hospitalization or death.

That leaves public health officials without the full data that can answer questions as the new Delta variant spreads.

In an interview with PBS News Hour, Jessica Malaty Rivera, an infectious disease epidemiologist and research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital and former science communications lead at the COVID Tracking Project, said not tracking breakthrough data with as much granularity as we would hope is “basically creating blind spots in our understanding of the true impact of the virus, especially the variants that are circulating so widely in the United States.”

Rivera said she has yet to see an explicit explanation for why the CDC stopped tracking all breakthrough cases. “I’ve heard rumors of things like lack of resources, lack of funding, lack of staff. But to me, it seems pretty, from an epidemiology standpoint, not defensible,” she said.

A breakthrough case refers to a person who is diagnosed with COVID after being fully vaccinated. A person is considered fully vaccinated 14 days after receiving the second dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna COVID vaccine, or two weeks after receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine.

The New York Times recently published data from seven states — California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah, Vermont  and Virginia — that keeps particularly detailed records on breakthrough cases.

Analysis showed that in six of the states, breakthrough infections made up 18% to 28% of all newly diagnosed cases of COVID in the past several weeks, and 12% to 24% of all COVID-related hospitalizations, with reported deaths higher than the CDC’s original estimate of .5%.

The figures on non-hospitalized breakthrough infections are also assumed to be underestimations since many fully vaccinated people who become infected may not feel sick enough to be tested for the virus, The Times reported.

About 30% of the new COVID cases in Los Angeles are breakthrough cases, Deadline reported. The number is up from 13% in July and 5% in April.

As of Aug. 17, more than 12,500 fully vaccinated Massachusetts residents had tested positive for COVID and an additional 18 had died, according to NBC Boston.

Fully vaccinated celebrities, elected officials speak out after getting COVID

Melissa Joan Hart, the former “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” star is “really mad” she has a breakthrough case. Hart shared on Instagram Aug. 19 that despite being vaccinated, she got COVID.

“I never do videos but I feel like this is important,” Hart, who recently moved to Tennessee, told her 1.6 million followers. “I got COVID. I am vaccinated. And I got COVID. And it’s bad. It’s weighing on my chest, it’s hard to breathe.”

Heart’s oldest son, Mason, also tested positive for COVID, as did her youngest son — who experienced no symptoms. Her middle child tested negative and her husband is still waiting for his results.

Hart blamed the vaccine’s failure to protect her on her kids not having to wear masks in school. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Aug. 16  signed an executive order allowing parents to choose whether their child should wear a mask in school.

“I’m mad, really mad,” Hart said, “because we tried, and we took precautions and we cut our exposure by a lot. But we got a little lazy, and I think as a country we got lazy. And I’m really mad that my kids didn’t have to wear masks at school because I’m pretty sure that’s where this came from.”

Celebrity Hilary Duff, revealed she had COVID on Instagram Aug. 20. Duff said she was experiencing a bad headache, brain fog, sinus pressure and a loss of taste and smell despite being vaccinated.

“That Delta … she’s a little b****,” Duff wrote, referring to the variant that accounts for 98.8% of current U.S. infections, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Slipknot singer Corey Taylor, 47, was devastated after testing positive for COVID and was forced to call off his upcoming appearance at a Michigan pop culture convention this weekend, Rolling Stone reported.

“I wish I had better news,” said Taylor in a recorded video message last week on Facebook. “I woke up today and tested positive and I’m very, very sick.”

The singer assured fans he “should be okay” because it’s the flu and he’s vaccinated.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, and his wife, Jacqueline, remained under doctors’ observation Monday at a Chicago hospital after getting COVID. Both were “responding positively to treatments,” Politico reported.

The couple was admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital Aug. 20 so physicians could carefully monitor their condition, one of the couple’s five children, said in a statement.

Jackson, a Chicago civil rights leader, was fully vaccinated and received his first dose in January during a publicized event where he urged others to receive the vaccine as soon as possible.

Three U.S. senators — John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Angus King (I-Maine) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) — announced Aug. 19 they tested positive for COVID despite being fully vaccinated, CBS News reported.

“Despite taking precautions and receiving the vaccine, this morning I tested positive for COVID-19,” King tweeted. “While I am not feeling great, I’m definitely feeling much better than I would have without the vaccine.”

The news came days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who also was fully vaccinated, tested positive for COVID.

Illinois state Sen. Dan McConchie announced Aug. 21 he had a “breakthrough” case of COVID. The Republican leader of the Illinois Senate said in a statement he was vaccinated against the virus this spring, and he urged others to get vaccinated.

COVID data show waning immunity

Of 514 patients in Israel hospitalized with COVID as of Aug. 15, 59% were fully vaccinated, according to an article from Science. The article cited national data tracked by Israel’s largest health management organization. The figures suggest breakthrough infections may be more common than previously thought.

Most of the vaccinated patients who were hospitalized, about 87%, were at least 60 years old.

“This is a very clear warning sign for the rest of the world,” said Ran Balicer, CIO at Clalit Health Services, Israel’s largest health maintenance organization. “If it can happen here, it can probably happen anywhere,” Balicer told Science.

Israel has one of the world’s highest COVID vaccination levels with 78% of the population over age 12 fully vaccinated — mostly with Pfizer’s vaccine. The country now has one of the highest infection rates in the world.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer and professor of biology at Simpson University, said “What we’re seeing is virus evolution 101.”

Hooker said the more a variant deviates from the original sequence used for the vaccine, the less effective the vaccine will be on that variant, which could explain why fully vaccinated people are getting infected with the Delta variant.

This isn’t the case for natural immunity, Hooker explained:

“The vaccine focuses on the spike protein, whereas natural immunity focuses on the entire virus. Natural immunity — with a more diverse array of antibodies and T-cell receptors — will provide better protection overall as it has more targets in which to attack the virus, whereas vaccine-derived immunity only focuses on one portion of the virus, in this case, the spike protein. Once that portion of the virus has mutated sufficiently, the vaccine no longer is effective.”

As The Defender reported Aug 2, vaccinated people may play a key role in aiding the evolution of COVID variants.

Scientific Reports research: highest risk for establishing a vaccine-resistant virus strain occurs when large fraction of population has already been vaccinated but transmission is not controlled.

SUBSCRIBE #TheDefender: https://t.co/zL66Edfiw5https://t.co/LpHKxgIbg0

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 3, 2021

According to research published July 30 in Scientific Reports, the highest risk for establishing a vaccine-resistant virus strain occurred when a large fraction of the population has already been vaccinated but the transmission is not controlled.

The data was consistent with a CDC study, also released July 30, which showed vaccinated people may transmit the Delta variant just as easily as the unvaccinated.

According to a pre-print study published Aug. 10 in The Lancet, vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of SARS-CoV-2 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated.

The study, by the Oxford University Clinical Research Group, demonstrated widespread vaccine failure and transmission under tightly controlled circumstances in a hospital lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. . . .

More than 267,000 excess infants deaths were reported worldwide in 2020 due to economic fallout from COVID-19, study suggests

• A new study looked at GDPs for 128 low- and lower middle-income countries and the infant mortality rate per 1,000 children
• An excess 267,000 infant deaths were reported in 2020, which is 7% higher than the 248,000 fatalities initially projected last year
• The highest number of estimated excess infant deaths were seen in India, which had a total of 99,642
• Researchers say the economic fallout likely led to malnutrition, lack of ability to access healthcare services and poor quality of these services . . .

Hundreds of thousands of babies died last year due to the economic fallout from COVID-19, a new modeling study suggests.

Researchers from World Bank Group, a financial institution headquartered in Washington, DC, estimated that an extra 267,000 infant fatalities were reported n 2020 in low- and middle-income countries.

This is seven percent higher than the number of newborns that usually die in the course of a year. . . .

[Daily Mail]

Because the results of mask wearing were so dismal for efficiently keeping aerosol build up down, AIP could draw no conclusion other than even low ventilation of a space out performs even the best masks being worn for the prevention of Covid-19.

“The results also suggest that, while higher ventilation capacities are required to fully mitigate aerosol build-up, even relatively low air-change rates (2h−1) lead to lower aerosol build-up compared to the best performing mask in an unventilated space.”

[AIP Full Report]

A civil liberties group has filed a lawsuit against South Carolina officials, asserting the state’s ban on school mask mandates violates federal laws aimed at protecting the rights of disabled Americans.

South Carolina’s legislature included a prohibition on school mask mandates in its budget, which it passed in June, and Molly Spearman, South Carolina’s education superintendent, later told each school board that because of that the school districts were barred from requiring students or employees to wear the face coverings.

That order violated the rights of students with disabilities, including those with certain underlying medical conditions that increase their risk of contracting the virus that causes COVID-19, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued in a complaint lodged this week.

More specifically, the barring of school mask mandates goes against the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, the group said.

“Both federal disability rights laws prohibit outright exclusion, denial of equal access, or unnecessary segregation for students with disabilities in public education. Both laws also prohibit methods of administration that defeat the fundamental goals of public schools, that is, to provide an education. Finally, both federal disability rights laws impose affirmative obligations on covered entities to proactively provide reasonable modifications or reasonable accommodations to ensure that individuals with disabilities have an equal opportunity to benefit from their public education,” their lawsuit stated.

The group noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends masking in schools, even though many other countries have forgone masking children because they’re at low-risk of contracting serious cases of COVID-19. They cited a collaborative that said recently that data from 100 school districts in North Carolina experienced low COVID-19 transmission when masking was in place.

“This finding strengthens CDC’s claim that ‘when teachers, staff, and students consistently and correctly wear a mask, they protect others as well as themselves,’” the suit stated.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. . . .

The campaign for Virginia GOP nominee for governor Glenn Youngkin is taking aim at Democrat rival Terry McAuliffe for recently suggesting the only way for the country to finally beat back COVID-19 is to “make it hard” for unvaccinated Americans to fly on airplane and enter a movie theatre.

“We have 93 million Americans today that are not vaccinated,” McAuliffe said a conference earlier this month in Las Vegas. “And we need to do everything that we possibly can. I tell my private businesses all the time, ‘I hope you mandate vaccine for people coming in.’

“Until we make it hard for people to get on planes or go to movie theaters, people just aren’t going to do it. We’re not going door to door right, but you make life difficult.”

Team Youngkin tweeted a video taken from a panel discussion at the event, hosted by the company HIMSS21.