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the major oak is dead, long live the major oak!

Major_Oak

 

This isn't the right thread, but I didn't quickly find where the topic originally came up, so will post here.

Another item this Administration tried to hide, a study of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness that was blocked from publication in the CDC's MMWR, was published elsewhere today, in JAMA Network Open.

CDC’s chief blocked a COVID vaccine study. Now it’s in a top medical journal

"By Lena H. Sun The Washington Post

A COVID vaccine study that the CDC’s chief halted this spring over methodological concerns was published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, a leading peer-reviewed medical journal.

The analysis used the same methodology that CDC’s interim director had criticized when the paper was not allowed to be published in the weekly scientific report of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study, which had been slated for publication in March in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found that the COVID-19 vaccine reduced the risk of emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half last winter. The findings were consistent with what researchers have found in past years, that the vaccine can help reduce the risk of severe illness in adults even after accounting for immunity from prior vaccination or infection.

“Science was never the issue,” said Michelle Barron, one of the study’s authors and senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth, a nonprofit health system in Colorado. “Certainly it was within [the CDC’s] purview to keep it out, for whatever reason, but it was clearly not for scientific reasons that the study was withheld from publication in the MMWR.”

Jay Bhattacharya, CDC’s interim director, delayed publication of the study before it was subsequently not published in the MMWR at all, The Washington Post previously reported. Bhattacharya had concerns about the methods used to calculate vaccine effectiveness, a Health and Human Services spokesman said at the time.

Barron said she believed the study was not published because the findings did not support Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda that wants to limit the use of COVID vaccine specifically.
..."

See previously:
US health officials nix publication of a study on COVID vaccine effectiveness (April 22, 2026)

 

Two quakes in Venezuela, 7.2 and 7.5, a few miles and 40 seconds apart.

Plus a 6.9 on the coast of Japan.
And 5.6 in Redwood Valley California.

Latest Earthquakes

 

finally, someone is doing something about the Canadian wildfires:
Trump says he’s holding Canada responsible for wildfire smoke and threatens higher tariffs

 

Canada just doesn't seem to learn. Modern fire mitigation actions have come a long way over the years, yet, Canada seems to just choose to wait to react to a crisis instead of putting in efforts to prevent them in the first place. (Controlled burns in high-risk areas, thinning out old dry, dead timber, etc. Some are even installing heat-sensing systems (on the ground and via satellite) to warn of fires before they become out-of-control.

After some devastating forest fires in Colorado about 10-years ago, they implemented many of these and we haven't had such devastating fires since.