Tag Archive for: centers for disease control and prevention

Mass Fentanyl Poisoning In One State Leaves Three Children Dead

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Children have been poisoned by fentanyl for weeks, resulting in three deaths and even more hospitalizations in one area of Texas, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Three young students attending Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools near Dallas are dead and six others have been hospitalized as a result of fentanyl exposure linked to one home in the area, where minors picked up drugs to later sell to their peers at school, according to The Dallas Morning News, which obtained a criminal complaint. Fentanyl, which is made mainly by the Mexican drug cartels using chemicals from China, is largely responsible for the more than 100,000 overdose deaths that happened in 2021, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

“To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors — naïve middle and high school students — is to shatter futures,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton told The Dallas Morning News.

One of the victims was a 14-year-old girl, who overdosed and almost died twice on an “M30” tablet, which can mimic oxycodone, hydrocodone, alprazolam (Xanax) and Adderall, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. A 13-year-old is also one of the nine victims.

The young girl overdosed first on Christmas Eve, when she was taken to the hospital, and later on Jan. 16 when she was temporarily paralyzed from the incident, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Law enforcement pursued the case with surveillance at the supplier’s home, where a student was dealt drugs, according to The Dallas Morning News. A school resource officer later detained a student after hearing them “making a ‘snorting sound’” in the bathroom.

Fentanyl continues to threaten young Americans, including babies who are sometimes exposed in utero and in their early years, experts recently told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The country has never experienced anything like this and we need a greater sense of urgency to cut off the supply from the Mexican Cartels,” former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division Derek Maltz told the DCNF.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Devastating’: How The Drug Crisis Is Hurting America’s Youngest People

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CDC: One-In-Five Gay Men Who Got Monkeypox Had Sex With 10 Or More People Before Getting Infected

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Nearly 20% of gay men who are contracting monkeypox in the U.S. reported having 10 or more partners in the three weeks before symptom onset, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report.

Virtually all monkeypox cases in the U.S. which have data available, 99%, are in men, the report also found, and 94% are in men who have sex with other men. The overwhelming majority had multiple sexual partners in the weeks leading up to their symptoms.

In addition to the 19% of men who said they had 10 or more partners over the three weeks preceding symptoms, 40% reported having two to four partners and 14% reported five to nine partners. 38% reported having group sex at a festival, group sex event or sex party.

The data was pulled from a sample of 358 men who contracted monkeypox for which data was available on recent sexual behaviors. That represents about 12% of all confirmed monkeypox cases in the U.S. between May 17 and July 22, the time period which the report covers. Age and gender identity data was available for 41% of all cases nationwide.

Of the 334 cases for which HIV status was known, 41% of patients were HIV-positive. Only 8% of patients were hospitalized, and there were no reported deaths. There remain zero confirmed deaths caused by monkeypox in the United States or Europe in 2022.

The Biden administration declared a public health emergency due to monkeypox last week, after the World Health Organization had already done so in July. Critics have accused the administration of not acting fast enough to respond to the outbreak, particularly as it regards vaccine procurement and distribution.

Data from the CDC, as well as the WHO and European health authorities, have increasingly shown that the virus is almost exclusively spreading within the homosexual male community, with some outlier cases within other demographics. Still, health authorities are engaged in intense debate over how to target messaging on the risks associated with monkeypox due to fears of directing stigma toward gay and bisexual men.

In its latest report, released Friday, the CDC admits “public health efforts should prioritize gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.” However, the agency still does not recommend that gay and bisexual men have fewer sexual partners in its guidance on safe sex during the monkeypox outbreak. The WHO made that recommendation last month.

AUTHOR

DYLAN HOUSMAN

Healthcare reporter. Follow Dylan on Twitter

RELATED ARTICLE: Area Man Shocked To Have Contracted Monkeypox After 20-Man Birthday Orgy

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Federal Mask Mandate For Public Transportation Overturned By District Judge

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A federal judge struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) mask mandate for public transportation Monday.

District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle of Florida’s middle district ruled that the mask mandate exceeds the CDC’s statutory authority under the Administrative Procedure Act, according to court documents. The lawsuit challenging the mandate was initially brought in July 2021 by the Health Freedom Defense Fund.

Mizelle, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, ruled that the CDC’s order “violates the procedures required for agency rulemaking under the APA” and remanded the mandate order back to the CDC.

The Biden administration has continued to extend the temporary mask mandate order throughout the pandemic, most recently announcing last week that the order would be extended at least 15 more days into May. With all 50 states and most localities having dropped their indoor mask mandates earlier this year, the federal mandate forcing Americans to mask on planes, trains and other public transit is one of the last remaining COVID-19 restrictions still in place.

Earlier this year, 21 states sued the Biden administration in an attempt to end the mandate. Biden’s CDC has come under further scrutiny for continuing to apply the public transportation mask mandate, citing the threat of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus, while ending Title 42 and relaxing immigration enforcement, citing the reduced impact of the pandemic at this time.

AUTHOR

DYLAN HOUSMAN

Healthcare reporter. Follow Dylan on Twitter

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘We Can’t Expect Them To Tell Us How To Live’: NYT Writer Questions ‘Follow The Science’ Guidance

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David Leonhardt, a writer for The New York Times (NYT), questioned some of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidance in a Friday article amid a rollback of several coronavirus restrictions across the country.

Leonhardt opens his piece by noting how the CDC warns against medium-rare hamburgers because they were “undercooked” and therefore could pose a threat. He also notes how eating raw cookie dough is ill-advised among, other apparently common things.

“If you happen to be somebody who engages in any of these risky activities, I have some bad news for you this morning: You apparently do not believe in following the science,” Leonhardt wrote.

Leonhardt said the “instinct” to follow the science “is both understandable and profoundly decent” especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, “but it has led to a widespread misunderstanding.”

“Many people have come to believe that expert opinion is a unitary, omniscient force. That’s the assumption behind the phrases ‘follow the science’ and ‘what the science says.’ It imagines science almost as a god -Science- who could solve our dilemmas if we only listened.”

Leonhardt said individuals are forced to make trade-offs about science, pointing to COVID-19 restrictions as an example.

“Covid restrictions – mask mandates, extended quarantines, restrictions on gatherings, school closure during outbreaks – can both slow the virus’s spread and have harmful side effects. These restrictions can reduce serious Covid illness and death among the immunocompromised, elderly and unvaccinated. They can also lead to mental-health problems, lost learning for children, child-care hardships for lower-income families, and isolation and frustration that have fueled suicides, drug overdoses and violent crime.”

Leonhardt noted how the CDC sometimes can “miss the big picture,” pointing to the CDC’s reluctance to urge mask use and slowness “to admit that outdoor masking has little benefit.”

“As you think about your own Covid views, I encourage you to remember that C.D.C. officials and other scientists cannot make these dilemmas go away,” Leonhardt wrote. “They can provide deep expertise and vital perspective. They are also fallible and have their own biases.”

Democratic-led states, like New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Connecticut, lifted their mask requirements recently, but President Joe Biden voiced disagreement with the decisions.

“It’s hard to say whether they’re wrong, here’s the science saying now that masks work, masks make a difference,” Biden said. “And there’s a relationship, I think there’s only one governor drawing back immediately and most of them are somewhere in the end of February, March, April. They’re set[ting] a time limit and I assume it has something to do with whether the Omicron variant continues to dive in fewer and fewer cases.”

“I committed that I would follow the science,” Biden continued. “And the science as put forward by the CDC and the federal people and I think it’s probably premature but it’s a tough call.”

The CDC recommends individuals wear a mask indoors regardless of their vaccination status.

COLUMN BY

BRIANNA LYMAN

Reporter. Follow Brianna on Twitter

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