Thursday, 1 April 2021
Weekly Watchlist: The Worst of the Pandemic Could Still Be Ahead of Us
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Matt Gaetz reportedly received talking-to about 'acting professionally' in Congress by House staff during first term, per CNN
AP Photo/Zach Gibson
- A new CNN report alleges Rep. Matt Gaetz was a long source of frustration for House GOP leadership.
- Staff for former House Speaker Paul Ryan reportedly held a discussion with Gaetz during his first term.
- Two sources said the conversation was about "acting professionally" while in Congress.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Among the barrage of alleged scandals and controversies currently plaguing Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a new CNN report claims the Republican lawmaker received a "talking-to" about his brash behavior as a freshman lawmaker in DC.
Gaetz quickly made a name for himself as a conservative provocateur and Trump loyalist shortly after entering Congress in 2017. The 38-year-old became a brazen staple on Fox News and Newsmax, frequently causing frustration among Republican House leadership, according to CNN.
Behind the scenes, Gaetz earned a reputation as a showboat among his colleagues. As Insider previously reported, many of his fellow Republicans were gloating about recent news reports that he is under a DOJ investigation. Former Trump aides told Insider they "feel a little vindicated."
"He's the meanest person in politics," one said to Insider's Tom LoBianco.
But a Thursday report from CNN suggests Gaetz has was a thorn in the side of GOP leadership.
According to the outlet, staff for then-House Speaker Paul Ryan held a short meeting with Gaetz in the Capitol during his first term. They reportedly had a discussion with the freshman lawmaker about "acting professionally while in Congress," two sources with knowledge of the meeting told the outlet.
The discussion was not related to one specific incident, according to one of the sources, and Ryan did not personally lecture Gaetz.
A spokesperson for Gaetz rejected the account to CNN, denying that Gaetz was ever reprimanded by Ryan or his staff.
"That did not happen, no meeting with the speaker or his staff," the spokesperson told the outlet.
A spokesperson for Gaetz did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The Justice Department is investigating whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and potentially violated federal laws against sex trafficking in the process. Since The New York Times reported the investigation earlier this week, Gaetz has faced further issues.
Gaetz on Wednesday claimed the DOJ's investigation is part of "an organized criminal extortion" scheme against him led by a former DOJ prosecutor. In a series of tweets, he said he and his family have been cooperating with the FBI on the matter and he provided emails to Politico on Wednesday that appeared to back up his statements.
But, as Insider's Sonam Sheth reported, it's unlikely the sex-trafficking investigation is connected to the alleged extortion plot. The former was launched in the summer of 2020, months before Gaetz said his father was contacted and allegedly extorted.
The saga continued Thursday morning when CNN reported that the Justice Department is also investigating whether Gaetz used campaign funds to pay for travel and other expenses for women.
Later Thursday, a CNN report alleged Gaetz showed lawmakers nude photos of women he said he had slept with, and boasted about his sexual exploits. He reportedly showed off the photos both in private and on the House floor, according to the outlet.
CNN reported that there is no indication the photos in question are connected to the Justice Department investigation.
Sonam Sheth contributed to this report.
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Nancy Pelosi said Matt Gaetz's removal from Judiciary is 'least that could be done' if allegations of possible sex-trafficking investigation are true
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- Nancy Pelosi said Matt Gaetz's removal from the Judiciary Committee is "the least that could be done" if charges against him are true.
- A bombshell report from The New York Times revealed that Gaetz was under federal investigation.
- The GOP lawmaker later claimed the report was a "planted leak" as part of an extortion scheme.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that Rep. Matt Gaetz's removal from the House Judiciary Committee is "least that could be done" should a Department of Justice investigation find allegations of possible sex trafficking true.
Pelosi responded to the emerging scandal surrounding Gaetz during a weekly news conference, saying that she believes the investigation is an "important issue" that affects the "integrity of the Congress."
Gaetz became embroiled in a political firestorm earlier this week after The New York Times first reported that the Justice Department was conducting a probe into whether he had a sexual relationship with a minor and violated federal sex-trafficking laws.
The Republican lawmaker responded by claiming that the allegations are false and that the investigation was part of an "organized criminal extortion" plot against him and that bombshell report from The Times was a "planted leak."
"If in fact these allegations are true, of course, being removed from the Judiciary Committee is the least that could be done," Pelosi told reporters during the press conference, "but again, I think from what we've heard so far, this would be a matter for the Ethics Committee."
Pelosi's remarks on the investigation followed a similar response by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who said it's too early to judge Gaetz and the situation at hand.
"Those are serious implications. If it comes out to be true, yes, we would remove him if that's the case," McCarthy told Fox News on Wednesday. "But right now Matt Gaetz says that it's not true, and we don't have any information. So let's get all the information."
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Company involved in 15 million discarded doses of the J&J vaccine has history of quality control violations
Thiago Prudêncio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
- One of the companies producing the J&J vaccine has a history of quality control violations, AP reported.
- Emergent Biosolutions was cited by the FDA on quality control issues, including mold and cracked vials.
- The company is at the center of the mix-up that led to 15 million discarded doses of the vaccine on Wednesday.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The company at the center of the mix-up that led to roughly 15 million discarded doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has a history of quality control violations, the Associated Press reported.
A manufacturing plant in Baltimore under Emergent Biosolutions, one of eight companies producing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, spoiled a batch of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, delaying production and halting future shipments, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The mishap was due to human error, according to The Times, when workers at the plant mixed up the vaccine ingredients. The Food and Drug Administration is currently investigating the incident.
But the company has been cited on multiple occasions by the Food and Drug Administration for quality control issues, ranging from cracked vials and poorly trained employees to problems managing mold and other contaminants within one of its facilities, according to records obtained by AP through the Freedom of Information Act.
When Johnson & Johnson first went to Emergent in April of last year to produce their vaccine, Emergent's Bayview facility was described as a contract testing laboratory that "did not manufacture products for distribution," according to FDA records obtained by the AP. At the time, it also didn't have the capacity for making millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
In a recent inspection, the FDA cited the company's Bayview plant on "data integrity concerns" after a review found that the facility had failed to ensure that electronic testing data "was protected from deletion or manipulation," the AP reported.
The Bayview plant was criticized for not following proper testing and lab procedures, according to the report. The FDA also cited the facility for not having a proper method for discarding rejected materials after an inspector wrote that "separate or defined areas to prevent contamination or mix-ups are deficient" at the plant.
In December 2017, another Emergent plant in Canton, Massachusetts, was also cited for not correcting "continued low level mold and yeast isolates" found in the facility.
A 2018 inspection of the company's Baltimore facility found that "procedures designed to prevent microbiological contamination of drug products purporting to be sterile are not adequately established and followed," according to the AP report.
A spokesman for the FDA told the AP that the agency "cannot comment on any particular company or any potential or ongoing compliance matters."
Representatives from Emergent did not immediately return Insider's request for comment regarding the report, but Emergent spokesman Matt Hartwig told AP in a statement that the company's "rigorous quality checks" found the spoiled batch that did not meet its standards.
Timothy Easley/AFP via Getty Images
"Discarding a batch of bulk drug substance, while disappointing, does occasionally happen during vaccine manufacturing, which is a complex and multi-step biological process," he wrote in the email to AP.
Despite the factory mixup, the Biden administration still expects to reach its goal of having enough vaccines to make every American adult eligible for a vaccine by the end of May, The Times reported.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that none of the already available doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines were impacted by the factory mixup, and that the company still expects to deliver 24 million doses in April and 100 million doses by the end of May.
"Obviously, these are doses that the U.S. government has purchased, but we also have plenty of doses from Pfizer and Moderna regardless," Psaki said.
In an interview on "CBS This Morning," top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci responded to the incident, saying that "human errors do happen."
"The good news about this, despite the fact that it's really quite unfortunate that about 15 million doses are not going to be able to be used, you do have checks and balances, and you see that," Fauci said, "and that's the reason why the good news is that it did get picked up.
"That's the reason that nothing from that plant has gone into anyone that we've administered to," Fauci continued.
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The research is in: People who've already had COVID-19 need just one shot
Getty/Matthew Horwood
- A single shot of Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine yields high protection for people who've had COVID-19.
- That's probably because their bodies are responding to a viral threat they've seen before.
- One expert said giving people who've had COVID-19 a second dose was "kind of a wasted shot."
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In the race to get coronavirus vaccines into arms as quickly as possible, scientists think they've found a way to accelerate the process: Give the people who've already had COVID-19 just one dose.
Most vaccine-eligible Americans are getting either Pfizer's or Moderna's vaccine, both of which require two doses administered several weeks apart. But a growing chorus of researchers now agrees that a single dose of either vaccine will generate a sufficient immune response among people who've already had the coronavirus. Giving them the second dose, research suggests, might essentially waste a good shot.
"For those who've been infected and recovered, which is tens of millions of people, they'll only need one shot, which will make the vaccine go even further," Dr. James Hildreth, the president of Meharry Medical College, told Insider.
Hildreth served on the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee that recommended all three authorized coronavirus vaccines in the US. The third, from Johnson & Johnson, is a one-shot vaccine, so people who've had COVID-19 would get a single dose of that no matter what.
Given that more than 30 million Americans are known to have had COVID-19, that could be up to 15 million Pfizer or Moderna shots that could go to other people.
New research backs up the one-shot strategy
Once a person has had COVID-19, their immune system should recognize the virus if it invades a second time. So when a vaccine spurs the body to start producing antibodies again, it's logical that the immune system would mount a stronger and quicker defense.
Indeed, a new peer-reviewed study found similar antibody responses among individuals who'd had COVID-19 and received a single dose of Pfizer's vaccine and individuals who received two doses of the vaccine but had never gotten COVID-19.
The researchers concluded that "a second vaccine dose did not offer previously infected individuals a substantially greater benefit over a single dose."
After the first dose, nearly 37% of the study participants who'd had COVID-19 experienced significant side effects versus 25% of study participants who'd never had COVID-19. After the second dose, there wasn't as much difference between the two groups: 51% versus 59%, respectively.
The researchers found that "fever and chills were more common among previously infected vaccine recipients after the first dose, whereas infection-naive individuals were more likely to experience headache, dizziness, or lightheadedness after the second dose."
'The first dose ends up serving as the booster'
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
In a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine last month, 32 researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai wrote that a single-dose strategy for people who'd already had the virus "requires investigation."
The team found in a small study that people who'd previously had COVID-19 developed 10 to 45 times as many antibodies after their first dose of Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine as the average uninfected person did. The research is still awaiting peer review.
"The first dose ends up serving as the booster," Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency-medicine physician at Brigham and Women's hospital, told Insider. "If you've been infected, it's very likely that one dose would be pretty damn good for quite a while."
There are a few caveats, though: People may need to confirm that they still have antibodies if they were sick a while ago, since antibody levels wane over time. An antibody test would also be required for those who suspect they had COVID-19 but never tested positive. If that antibody test comes back positive, the second shot is most likely redundant.
"What is the point?" Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at Yale University, told Insider. "It's kind of a wasted shot."
'This is where the policy lags science'
Simon Dawson - Pool/Getty Images
France in February began recommending a single vaccine dose for people who've had COVID-19.
By then, the Mount Sinai research was out, and another preliminary study had also discovered high antibody levels among healthcare workers who'd had COVID-19 before receiving their first shot.
Dr. Mohammad Sajadi, a coauthor of that study, told Insider that COVID-19 patients typically develop antibodies about two to three weeks after their initial infection. But the healthcare workers showed high antibody levels a week after their first shot.
"What that shows you is that individuals who had a prior COVID infection have what we call a recall response or a memory response," Sajadi said. "For most infections, the second time you see that microorganism, you should get a faster response."
Then in late February, a UK study found roughly equal antibody levels among people who'd received the first dose of Pfizer's vaccine and had never gotten COVID-19 and those who'd had COVID-19 but weren't vaccinated yet. After the people who'd had COVID-19 got their first shot, their antibody levels were 140 times their peak levels before the vaccine.
Yet most countries, including the US, don't yet recommend a single-dose regimen for people who've had COVID-19.
"This is where the policy lags science," Iwasaki said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC News in February that the idea was worth considering.
"The data looked really quite impressive - that if you've been infected and then you get a single dose, the boost that you get with that single dose is really enormous," Fauci said. "That is one thing that you might want to consider, but we really want to look carefully at the data first."
Concerns about long-term immunity
Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Getty Images
Since scientists haven't had much time to follow up with vaccine recipients, there's no consensus yet about how long vaccine-induced immunity lasts. This uncertainty is one reason experts are hesitant to advocate anything other than the standard two-dose regimens of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Delaying or skipping the second dose places a lot of pressure on the first dose to provide solid, long-term immune protection, Princeton University researchers wrote Tuesday. They expressed concern that switching up the dosing regimen could lead to a "broad range" of outcomes among vaccinated people.
But Iwasaki said people who'd had COVID-19 could probably wait months before getting their second shot - if they need one at all.
"There just isn't any need to do it so early," she said.
Scientists are also optimistic that even though antibody levels are known to wane over time, T cells will confer long-term protection for those who've had COVID-19. Like antibodies, T cells have impressive powers of recollection that can help the immune system recognize and reattack the coronavirus.
A recent study found that people who previously had COVID-19 mounted a stronger T-cell response to one shot of Pfizer's vaccine than people who'd never gotten infected did.
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