(FREE) PAINE IN THE MORNING: 12 things you need to know this Monday – January 24, 2022

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Quadruple-Vaxed Israel Breaks World Record in Coronavirus Cases – In yet another pandemic-related first, Israel is now the number one country in the world for new coronavirus infections per capita, with a daily rate of 0.6 percent of the population testing positive.

Israel has seen lead the world in many pandemic-related aspects. It was the first country to close its borders when the outbreak began in March 2020. A year later, it became the first country to aggressively inoculate its population with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. – READ MORE

Rochelle Walensky says CDC is ‘pivoting’ the language of what it means to be fully vaccinated – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the health agency is pivoting on the CDC’s language of what it means to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“And what we really are working to do is pivot the language to make sure that everybody is as up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines as they personally could be, should be, based on when they got their last vaccine,” Walensky said during Friday’s press briefing from the White House COVID-19 response team. – READ MORE

Judge Blocks Biden Vax Mandate For Federal Workers – A federal judge on Friday blocked a Biden administration order mandating that federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown ruled against the Biden administration, arguing that President Joe Biden lacked authority to “mandate that all federal employees consent to vaccination against COVID-19 or lose their jobs.” – READ MORE

France, Ireland follow England in lifting of COVID restrictions – France and Ireland are following England in announcing the lifting of a host of COVID-19 restrictions.

The Irish Independent reported Friday that the majority of COVID restrictions in Ireland will be removed by 6 a.m. Saturday, including vaccine passports. The paper said the government also will eliminate “limits on household visits, early closing time for hospitality and events, capacity restrictions for indoor and outdoor events including weddings, social distancing, the rule-of-six at a table … and the requirement to maintain contact details for close contact tracing.” – READ MORE

Czech Republic Abolishes Plan To Mandate COVID-19 Vaccines – The new Czech government on Wednesday threw out the previous administration’s plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for over-60s and people in key professions.

Under the former government, older adults, health care workers, firefighters, police officers and medical students would have been required to be vaccinated against COVID-19, effective March. – READ MORE

Top medical journal: Release the vaccine safety data – Declaring Big Pharma “the least trusted industry,” editors of one of the world’s oldest medical journals called for regulators and public health bodies to release raw data from the COVID-19 vaccine trials to provide answers to critical questions such as why vaccine trials were not designed to test efficacy against infection and spread of SARS-CoV-2.

The British Medical Journal article by senior editor Peter Doshi, editor-in-chief Kamrn Abbasi and former editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee argued that if regulators had insisted on transparency, countries would have learned sooner “about the effect of vaccines on transmission and been able to plan accordingly.” – READ MORE

Arizona plan would make employers liable for complications from COVID shots – COVID-19 and its variations undoubtedly are a dangerous threat to the health of a nation’s population, and hundreds of thousands have died of it in America since it apparently came out of a Chinese research lab two years ago.

But also significant are the nearly 600,000 “incidents” that have been reported to the nation’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, identified in a report from Western Journal. – READ MORE

California bill would allow preteens to be vaccinated without parents’ consent –California would allow children age 12 and up to be vaccinated without their parents’ consent, the youngest age of any state, under a proposal late Thursday by a state senator.

Alabama allows such decisions at age 14, Oregon at 15, Rhode Island and South Carolina at 16, according to Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who is proposing the change. Only Washington, D.C., has a lower limit, at age 11. – READ MORE

COVID-19: Nearly half of virus hospitalizations in Massachusetts are for other issues –Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health on Thursday—for the first time—made a distinction between COVID-19 patients hospitalized with “primary” and “incidental” cases.

Boston 25, citing the newly released data, reported that 49% of the state’s 3,187 patients– hospitalized on Jan. 18–were there because of another matter and diagnosed with the virus once at the hospital. – READ MORE

Pfizer CEO pushes annual COVID-19 vaccine shot as company makes billions: ‘Easier to convince people to do it’ – Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla admitted Saturday that he is hoping people around the world will receive annual COVID-19 vaccine shots.

The admission comes as the global community implements booster campaigns because, as Reuters noted, the COVID vaccines have proven to be effective at preventing most deaths and hospitalizations, but not transmission. – READ MORE

Gavin Newsom clarifies calling train thieves ‘gangs’: ‘Forgive me … They’re organized groups’ – California Gov. Gavin Newsom clarified this week that when he called criminals accused of stealing packages from cargo trains in the state “gangs of people” he wasn’t implying the thefts were gang-related.

“This is not one-off,” Newsom said in a news conference near Union Pacific Railroad tracks in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to the Washington Times. “This is organized theft. These are organized gangs of people that are coming out.” – READ MORE

No Charges For Senior FBI Official Who Pursued Relationship With Subordinate, Meddled In Police Investigation Of ‘Traffic Incident’ – The Department of Justice (DOJ) found that a senior FBI official did not report a romantic relationship with a subordinate in a “timely” manner and that the official also interfered in a local police investigation of a traffic incident involving the subordinate.

Also, a former senior FBI official did not follow protocol to “Mitigate Adverse Consequences of the Romantic Relationship” once the official had learned of the relationship. – READ MORE