View allAll Photos Tagged omicron
Nurses hold national day of action Jan. 13 to demand employers, Biden administration protect RNs, health care workers
Registered nurse members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union of RNs, hold actions across the country on Thursday, Jan. 13 — including a candlelight vigil in Washington, D.C. for nurses who lost their lives to Covid-19, and a national virtual press conference — to demand the hospital industry invest in safe staffing, and to demand that President Biden follow through on his campaign promise to protect nurses and prioritize public health.
NNU nurses emphasize that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has ripped away critical protections from health care workers and the public, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) weakening Covid isolation guidelines and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announcing that it intends to withdraw critical Covid protections for health care workers—right when the Omicron variant is exploding across the country and hospitalizations are skyrocketing. Nurses emphasize that being left unprotected by the government and by their profit-driven hospital employers which have failed to invest in safe staffing and provide critical health and safety protections, has created such unsafe working conditions that nurses are being driven away from the profession.
#ProtectNurses
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
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Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
Koni-Omega Microfilm Camera HK-35
Manufactured by Konishiroku Photo Industries (distributed by Berkey Photo) fitted with Omicron 70mm f/5.6
© Dirk HR Spennemann 2012, All Rights Reserved
Alpha Omicron Pi participated in CSULB's Panhellenic Recruitment and are pleased to welcome nearly 30 new members!
These amazing women are poised to make a great impact on the Lambda Beta chapter of AOII and CSULB's Greek Community.
For more information about AOII or CSULB Panhellenic Recruitment, please see our website at www.alphaomicronpicsulb.org
www.bostonglobe.com/2022/06/06/nation/omicron-booster-sho...
Omicron booster shots are taking longer than expected. Will the wait be worth it? - The Boston Globe
Pfizer once promised to update its COVID vaccines in 100 days, but developing an Omicron shot is taking at least twice as long.
When the Omicron variant emerged in November, scientists at Moderna and Pfizer sacrificed their Thanksgiving holiday weekend to begin working on new shots tailored to the latest incarnation of the virus. Emboldened by the record-breaking speed of the designing, testing, and authorization of the original COVID-19 vaccines ― accomplished in under a year ― Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla promised that updated shots would be available within 100 days.
“This vaccine will be ready in March,” Bourla emphatically told CNBC in January. “I don’t know if it will be needed. I don’t know if and how it will be used. But it will be ready.”
That self-imposed deadline passed with few updates and no explanations for the delay. By the time the US Food and Drug Administration convenes a meeting late this month to discuss plans for updating booster shots in the fall, more than 200 days will have elapsed since Moderna and Pfizer began working on their Omicron vaccines.
So what’s the holdup?
The pace — more like a brisk jog than a sprint — has frustrated some scientists who believe updated vaccines would help increase the strength and breadth of the immune system’s ability to fight Omicron. “The sense of urgency is lacking,” said Larissa Thackray, an infectious disease biologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Pfizer and Moderna did not grant interviews, but vaccine scientists ticked off several reasons for the delay. To start, the virus keeps changing too quickly. There’s also conflicting data on the superiority of variant-specific boosters over what’s already available, casting doubt on their value. And with the majority of Americans yet to get even their first booster shot, the companies’ financial incentive for making new ones has diminished.
It took Pfizer and Moderna just over 300 days to go from the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 to earning emergency authorization of their shots from the FDA — crushing Merck’s previous record of developing a mumps vaccine in four years. Some experts believe the 100-day turnaround time for updated vaccines could be possible under some circumstances. Apparently it was too ambitious in this case.
“People just got so accustomed to the fast pace of progress with the development of vaccines during the pandemic that their expectations are unrealistic,” said David Montefiori, a virologist at the Duke University School of Medicine whose lab is running tests on Cambridge-based Moderna’s updated vaccine.
Moderna chief executive Stéphane Bancel — never one to undersell the speed and flexibility of mRNA vaccine technology — has been unusually restrained when it comes to talking about the Omicron shots. Bancel has suggested that Moderna is focused on updating its vaccine for the fall. The company expects initial data from a clinical study of two updated booster shots later this month, which will help it decide which vaccine to offer.
In theory, designing the new vaccine is a simple matter of tweaking its mRNA sequence to match the genetic code of Omicron — something that Pfizer and Moderna scientists could have easily accomplished over the Thanksgiving weekend. But making enough of the vaccine to begin clinical trials takes at least several weeks. And so Pfizer didn’t announce the start of its Omicron vaccine clinical trial until Jan. 25.
That two-month turnaround — from announcing work on an updated booster to testing it in people — is still quick compared to traditional vaccine development. But the rapid evolution of the coronavirus has turned variant-specific vaccine development into a game of whack-a-mole, and drug companies are losing. Previous efforts to develop vaccines for the Beta and Delta variants moved too slowly for the vaccines to be useful. And since Omicron has evolved into several subvariants since November, the Omicron booster shot is at risk of becoming outdated before it’s authorized for use.
“Having the variant-specific vaccine only makes sense if that variant persists for a long enough period of time to vaccinate people against it,” said Dr. Lindsey Baden, an infectious disease doctor and clinical research director at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who is involved in Moderna’s variant-specific booster shot trial.
Running clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of the shots is the most time-consuming step of vaccine development ― regulators need to be sure that the updated shots are safe. Vaccines based on mRNA technology “are still too new to be fully confident in how they will behave,” Baden said. “We don’t just want to assume. So if you want data, you have to do the clinical study.”
But studies of the new boosters — each tested in several hundred people — will likely be too small to rigorously assess their ability to prevent infections and disease. Instead, the companies will take blood samples to see if the updated boosters spur bigger or better antibody responses than the existing boosters.
So far, studies testing Omicron boosters in mice and monkeys have yielded surprisingly mixed and mediocre results. “We expected the variant vaccine would be stupendously better, and that the original one wouldn’t work that well,” said Thackray, who led a study comparing the Omicron and original boosters in mice. Although the Omicron boosters triggered somewhat higher antibody levels against that variant, the original booster also worked fairly well.
Likewise, Sidi Chen, an associate professor of genetics at Yale University, found that an Omicron booster spurred higher neutralizing antibody levels against the Omicron variant, but he cautioned that “the effect isn’t dramatically different” from the original booster. In contrast, a National Institutes of Health study found that monkeys who got the Omicron booster actually developed fewer antibodies than animals who received the original booster.
In March, Moderna began testing a so-called bivalent booster that contains mRNA for both the original coronavirus and the Omicron strain — an effort to “hedge your bets” against the evolving virus, Thackray said. The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee will likely debate the relative merits of the original, Omicron, and bivalent boosters when it meets at the end of the month.
Dr. Eric Rubin, an immunologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a member of the committee, said he would like to see data that show an updated booster shot can broaden immunity to several SARS-CoV-2 variants. “Then we might feel much more comfortable that we can prevent things that we haven’t seen yet,” he said.
But if the updated vaccines are not markedly better, companies may lack the financial incentive to actually produce them. Moderna and Pfizer have already booked billions in vaccine sales through the remainder of the year, regardless of whether they provide the original vaccine or updated boosters. And given that less than half of vaccinated Americans and fewer than one-third of all people in the United States have yet to get their first booster shot, the lack of urgency to make second-generation boosters probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Throughout the pandemic, health officials have stressed that the goal of the vaccines is to prevent serious disease, hospitalization, and death. “I would argue that we’ve achieved that goal with the [existing] ancestral vaccine,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee.
Offit said he would like to better define what the precise goal of updated boosters would be. Although boosters every three to six months can raise antibody levels and prevent mild and moderation infections for a short time, he doesn’t see that as a “viable or necessary public healthy strategy” long term.
“We are going to have to get used to mild and moderate infection and have a reasonable goal for this vaccine, because we are driving people crazy,” Offit said. “There is already booster fatigue.”
Jonathan Saltzman of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Ryan Cross can be reached at ryan.cross@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @RLCscienceboss.
Alpha Omicron Pi participated in CSULB's Panhellenic Recruitment and are pleased to welcome nearly 30 new members!
These amazing women are poised to make a great impact on the Lambda Beta chapter of AOII and CSULB's Greek Community.
For more information about AOII or CSULB Panhellenic Recruitment, please see our website at www.alphaomicronpicsulb.org
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
Simmon Omega 120 range finder camera (third model, 1954)
with 90mm f=3.5 Omicron lens in a Wollensak Rapax shutter
This is the first civilian production of the Combat camera made by the Simmon Brothers (known for their range of enlargers). Has a ratchet rapid film advance. The camera was later further developed by Konica to create the Koni-Omega Rapid.
© Dirk HR Spennemann 2010, All Right Reserved
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
Rueda trasera aro 28 y rueda delantera aro 26.-
Marco hecho a mano por artesanos italianos en Colombia.
La fabrica de bicicletas Canopus nacio el año 1984 y dejo de funcionar el año 1996.-
Aquí puedes ver alguna referencia de como se ve completa.-
Omicron, unité de production :
En raison de la diversité de ses clients, Omicron est spécialisée dans la fabrication haute qualité du prototype à la série, pour les secteurs les plus exigeants (médical, nucléaire, militaire, ...).
The Lambda Rho chapter of Alpha Omicron Pi at TCU held their 2014 Big-Little Reveal on Friday, October 3.
Sierra, a student at USC, describes the Big-Little reveal this way in her blog: "The day every new member and to-be Big waits impatiently for all semester long is finally here, the day where Little has to wonder no more of which girl she would call Big from this day on for the rest of her life. It's the day of reveal and as all of the Bigs are stressing to get the final touches done and set up the activities for the day, the Little's wait anxiously, excited to finally be united with their one and only but nervous about what is in store for them until that point." For the rest of her post, see www.thisonelifeblog.com/blog/big-little-reveal-week-day-4....
You can learn more about the Lambda Rho chapter of AOII here:
www.facebook.com/AOIILambdaRho
This album is part of the event coverage for the Fort Worth Portrait Project. The project tells the story of Fort Worth from 2014 - 2044 one captioned portrait at a time, but I also enjoy covering events like this one too.
Please follow the Fort Worth Portrait Project:
www.redeemedexpressions.com/fort-worth-portrait-project/
www.facebook.com/fortworthportraitproject
www.twitter.com/FWPortraitProj
www.instagram.com/fortworthportraitproject
Do you want to be featured in the project? Just head to the following site with a photo and a caption:
OmiCron in the Fractal Forest (the interactive tech area of the Anon Salon NYE party, Sea of Dreams)
www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-trial-worlds-first-finds-4t...
Israeli trial, world’s first, finds 4th dose ‘not good enough’ against Omicron
Expert at Sheba Medical Center says jab raises COVID antibody levels, but there are ‘still a lot of infections’ among those who received it
Nearly a month after Sheba Medical Center launched a landmark study to test the efficacy of a fourth COVID shot, the hospital said Monday that this fourth booster was only partially effective in protecting against the Omicron strain.
“The vaccine, which was very effective against the previous strains, is less effective against the Omicron strain,” Prof. Gili Regev-Yochay, a lead researcher in the experiment said.
“We see an increase in antibodies, higher than after the third dose,” Regev-Yochay said. “However, we see many infected with Omicron who received the fourth dose. Granted, a bit less than in the control group, but still a lot of infections,” she added.
“The bottom line is that the vaccine is excellent against the Alpha and Delta [variants], for Omicron it’s not good enough,” she said.
Regev-Yochay added that it is still probably a good idea to give a fourth shot to those at higher risk, but intimated that perhaps the current campaign, which also offers the jab to the over-60s, should be amended to only include even older groups. She did not elaborate.
The hospital did not release more specific data. Regev-Yochay said the results of the research are only preliminary, but indicated that she was providing the initial information since there was high public interest in the matter.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has pushed ahead with expanding Israel’s fourth dose program, despite the lack of data.
As of Sunday night, over 500,000 Israelis have been inoculated with a fourth dose. The Health Ministry began offering fourth vaccine shots to Israelis 60 and older, the immunocompromised, and medical workers last month.
Sheba’s trial program, which began in December with 150 medical staff being given the shot, is many times smaller than normal drug trials, which usually involve thousands of volunteers who results are tracked for months. But it is also the only known study of the effects of a fourth dose.
Israel is pinning hopes that the extra booster may help keep the Omicron variant from overwhelming hospitals and shutting down normal life.
The study, the first of its kind in the world, is being carried out in conjunction with the Health Ministry, and has been approved by the government’s senior panel on human medical trials.
The World Health Organization has urged countries to delay booster programs until the whole world has access to initial vaccine doses.
Around two-thirds of Israel’s population of nearly 9.5 million have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and nearly 4.4 million Israelis have received three doses, according to the latest Health Ministry figures.
www.cnn.com/world/live-news/omicron-variant-coronavirus-n...
1 in 5 Americans have been infected with Covid-19 during the pandemic
Twenty percent of Americans have now been infected with Covid-19 over the course of the pandemic, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
According to JHU data, at least 66,356,336 cases of Covid-19 have been detected over the course of the pandemic in the US. More than 800,000 people have died.
The US is currently averaging 777,453 new cases and 1,797 new deaths per day, according to JHU data.
Health expert: Fourth dose of Covid-19 vaccine “too late” for fighting Omicron in the US
Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine Dr. Peter Hotez said Monday that a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine would be "too late" to combat Omicron in the United States.
"By the time you get that through and get the FDA and CDC to sign off on it and by the time we get an immune response and vaccinated health care providers and that's the group I suggested that we tried it for it will be three or four weeks from now and by then possibly the Omicron wave will have subsided substantially and we'll be having to worry about the next variant," Hotez told CNN's Poppy Harlow.
Early results from an Israeli study show a fourth dose of the Covid-19 vaccine can increase antibodies, but it still not be enough to prevent Omicron breakthrough cases.
Israel began rolling out a fourth dose of the coronavirus vaccine with immediate effect for people ages 60 and over, medical workers and people with suppressed immune systems last month.
Hotez cautioned that experts in the US still need to review the final data from Israel before any recommendations on treatment.
"The reason I was concerned about not giving a second booster was based on information that we got from Imperial College London showing that within a couple of months after the boost, you got a decline in effectiveness down to 30% to 40% so the idea is you boost, get a big bump in virus neutralizing antibodies and maybe that would help the health care workforce," Hotez added. "So we’ll see what the data from Israel looks like."
Moderna should have data on Omicron-specific vaccine in March, company CEO says
Moderna should have data available on its Omicron-specific Covid-19 vaccine in March, company CEO Stéphane Bancel said Monday.
“It should be in the clinic in the coming weeks. And we're hoping in the March timeframe, we should be able to have data to share with regulators to figure out the next step forward,” he said in a panel conversation at Davos.
“That’s always been a great partnership between public health experts, the regulators and vaccine makers to figure out what's the best path,” he said.
“For two years, we've all worked literally, you know, seven days a week together to figure out how to fight this common enemy of the virus. The enemy is not another company or another group. The enemy has only been the virus and will stay the virus.”
Chairman of Joint Chiefs Gen. Milley tests positive for Covid-19
Gen. Mark Milley tested positive for Covid-19 Sunday and “is experiencing very minor symptoms,” Joint Staff spokesperson Col. Dave Butler said in a statement Monday.
Milley “is working remotely and isolating himself from contact with others,” Butler said, adding that the top US general “can perform all of his duties from the remote location.”
“He has received the Covid-19 vaccines including the booster,” Butler said.
According to the statement, Milley most recently had contact with President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Jan. 12, at Gen. Raymond Odierno’s funeral.
“He tested negative several days prior to and every day following contact with the President until yesterday,” Butler said.
“All other Joint Chiefs of Staff except for one tested negative for COVID-19 yesterday,” he said.
f/2.8 pour choisir un demi-diaphragme il faut programmer l'incrément de l'exposition à 1/2 IL. valable pour tous les TTartisan.
Koni-Omega Microfilm Camera HK-35
Manufactured by Konishiroku Photo Industries (distributed by Berkey Photo) fitted with Omicron 70mm f/5.6
© Dirk HR Spennemann 2012, All Rights Reserved
A simétrica composição coloca este retrato naquele time das imagens "antropométricas" ou seja, que levam ao reconhecimento do outro. Pertencem a esta categoria as imagens 3x4 que carregamos nos documentos oficiais.
De tal maneira que apenas somos socialmente se o estado pode nos diferenciar por meio de um número, de um ofício, de uma formação formal, de um nome, etc.
Mas, esta imagem, por mais que se assemelhe aos nossos pequenos 3x4, ela não carrega apenas a identidade do fotografado e sim o fruto de um diálogo visual entre o fotógrafo e o retratado.
A simplicidade da tomada, seu vértice perpendicular, sua fuga dos chamados ângulos inusitados ou dos circenses movimentos tão comuns à fotografia contemporânea coloca esta fotografia em minha caixa de gostos pessoais.
Cabe ao fotógrafo enxergar além do óbvio. Porém, às vezes o óbvio é a meta.
Osvaldo Santos Lima