Month: May 2022

On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) authorized the use of a single booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech for children ages 5 through 11.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf said: “While it has largely been the case that COVID-19 tends to be less severe in children than adults, the omicron wave has seen more kids getting sick with the disease and being hospitalized, and children may also experience longer term effects, even following initially mild disease.” Califf said that the authorization for the single dose in the youngest children eligible for the vaccine provides “continued protection against COVID-19,” adding that “vaccination continues to be the most effective way to prevent COVID-19 and its severe consequences… and it is safe.”

Pfizer in late April asked the FDA for the emergency authorization to cover booster shots for children 5 to 11.  Earlier that month, Pfizer and BioNTech released clinical trial data from 140 children between the ages of 5 and 11 who had received a booster shot showing a six-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19.

Last October, federal regulators first authorized use of the vaccine for children between 5 and 11; and late last month, a second booster shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine was approved for those 50 and older.

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During a trip to Buffalo, N.Y., on Tuesday to visit with families of the victims killed in a mass shooting over the weekend, President Biden said that White supremacy is a “poison” that “has no place in America.”  The President and First Lady Jill Biden also met with community leaders, and visited a memorial site for the victims where they added a bouquet of flowers and had a moment of silence.

The attack on Saturday at the TOPS Market in Buffalo killed 10 people and injured three others, making it the deadliest of multiple attacks that occurred in the United States over the weekend. Police say they’re investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Authorities say the suspected shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, was motivated by hate when he opened fire at the store and had written a lengthy manifesto before the attack in which he communicated racist views against people of color. Gendron traveled about 200 miles to Buffalo from his home in another part of New York. Authorities said they believe that Gendron had planned on carrying out more shootings in other locations before he was stopped at the TOPS store.

The President called the shooting an act of domestic terrorism:  “White supremacy is a poison, it’s a poison … running through our body politic…And it’s been allowed to grow and fester right before our eyes. No more, no more. We need to say as clearly and as forcefully as we can that the ideology of White supremacy has no place in America. None.  In America, evil will not win, I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word. The evil did come to Buffalo and it’s come to all too many places, manifested in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology, rooted in fear and racism. It’s taken so much.”

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On Monday, the White House announced steps to increase and protect affordable housing nationwide by using federal funds as an incentive for reforms in a move to counter rising inflation. The White House plan will use funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law to control housing costs.

The plan acknowledges that a shortage of available housing and rising rent is helping to fuel inflation. Biden’s administration says the crisis has slowly built up over the past five years to create a deficit in affordable housing and exacerbate rent, and was made worse due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The White House said in a statement Monday: “The president’s plan includes legislative and administrative actions that will help close America’s housing supply shortfall in five years, starting with the creation and preservation of hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units in the next three years. When aligned with other policies to reduce housing costs and ensure affordability, such as rental assistance and down payment assistance, closing the gap will mean more affordable rents and more attainable homeownership for Americans in every community.”

The White House added: “Today’s rising housing costs are years in the making. Fewer new homes were built in the decade following the Great Recession than in any decade since the 1960s — constraining housing supply and failing to keep pace with demand and household formation. This mismatch between housing supply and housing demand grew during the pandemic. While estimates vary, Moody’s Analytics estimates that the shortfall in the housing supply is more than 1.5 million homes nationwide.”

Administration officials said that the president’s proposed $5.8 trillion 2023 budget includes investments in housing inventory that would lead to an addition of 500,000 homes nationwide. The White House said it’s working with the Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Commerce to address supply chain disruption for building materials.

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