North Carolina Children Now Must Get Approval From a Parent Before Receiving the Current COVID-19 Vaccine.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina children now must get approval from a parent before receiving the current COVID-19 vaccine available to them under legislation that Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law on Friday.

 

 

The written consent requirement is contained in a broader measure that largely expands the medications or immunizations, including vaccines, that pharmacists trained to deliver shots can administer to consumers. It comes even as the U.S. and North Carolina see a marked rise in COVID-19 cases due to a highly contagious variant.

The measure, which received near unanimous support in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, also states that trained pharmacy technicians and interns can administer a COVID-19 or flu vaccine under a pharmacist's supervision.

"This important legislation will help our state administer COVID-19 vaccines more quickly and efficiently,” Cooper, a Democrat, said in a news release announcing the bill signing.

Maker of Popular Coronavirus Test Told Factory to Destroy Inventory

 

 

For weeks in June and July, workers at a Maine factory making one of America’s most popular rapid tests for COVID-19 were given a task that shocked them: Take apart millions of the products they had worked so hard to create and stuff them into garbage bags.

Soon afterward, Andy Wilkinson, a site manager for Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer, stood before rows of employees to announce layoffs. The company canceled contracts with suppliers and shuttered the only other plant making the test, in Illinois, dismissing a workforce of 2,000. “The numbers are going down,” he told the workers of the demand for testing. “This is all about money.”

 

1,200 First Responders Will File Lawsuit Against COVID Vaccine Mandate

 

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Representatives for Hawaii union members taking legal action against the state’s COVID vaccine mandate held a news conference at attorney Michael Green’s office on Thursday. Approximately 1,200 first responders are part of the class action lawsuit.

The attorneys announced that they plan to file the lawsuit on Friday in order to try to stop the mandate which takes effect Monday, Aug. 16. This one is on behalf of police officers, firefighters and other first responders.

“I have to choose between that career that I’m committed to or put in an experimental drug that I don’t know what it’s gonna do to me in my body, or I got to give all that up,” said Capt. Kaimi Pelekai of the Honolulu Fire Department.

Pelekai says the City just sent county workers a letter saying they either have to get vaccinated or show proof of religious or medical exemption by Monday — or they could lose their job. KHON2 is asking the City about the letter.

https://www.khon2.com/coronavirus/hawaii-union-members-hold-news-conference-to-discuss-taking-legal-action-against-covid-vaccine-mandate/

 

19,916 Eye Disorders’ Including Blindness Following COVID Vaccine Reported in Europe

 Hundreds of cases of blindness are among the 19,916 reports of “eye disorders” to the World Health Organization’s European drug monitoring agency following injection of experimental COVID-19 vaccines. A new study is getting plenty of attention after researchers linked a particular form of herpes to the COVID-19 vaccine in a handful of people.

The nearly 20,000 eye disorders reported to VigiBase, a database for the WHO maintained by the Uppsala Monitoring Centre(UMC) in Uppsalla, Sweden, include:

• Eye pain (4616)
• Blurred vision  (3839)
• Photophobia or light intolerance (1808)
• Visual impairment (1625)
• Eye swelling (1162)
• Ocular hyperaemia or red eyes (788)
• Eye irritation (768)
• Itchy eyes or eye pruritus (731)
• Watery eyes or increased lacrimation (653)
• Double vision or diplopia (559)
• Eye strain or asthenopia (459)
• Dry eye (400)
• Swelling around the eye or periorbital swelling (366)
• Swelling of eyelid (360)
• Flashes of light in the field of vision or photopsia (358)
• Blindness (303)
• Eyelid oedema (298)
• Eye or ocular discomfort (273)
• Conjunctival haemorrhage or breakage of a small eye vessel (236)
• Blepharospasm or abnormal contraction of an eye muscle(223)
• Vitreous floaters (192)
• Periorbital oedema (171)
• Eye haemorrhage (169)

https://alethonews.com/2021/05/05/19916-eye-disorders-including-blindness-following-covid-vaccine-reported-in-europe/

Celebration of a Measure that Places the Burden of Proof in Special Education on the School System Rather than the Parent.

 CONCORD – Katie Duran of Wolfeboro was beaming Thursday and said she almost accidentally signed House Bill 581 just after Gov. Chris Sununu in celebration of a measure that places the burden of proof in special education on the school system rather than the parent.

Duran and her mother Carrie, who is headed to Nashville to the Miss Amazing Pre-Teen Pageant, stood with other parents and families for the bill signing for a law that also includes the development of a committee to study the special education Individual Education Plan (IEP) and dispute resolution processes.

Sununu said it was a “bipartisan win” for the state that “hits home for a lot of families.”

 “It’s a very complicated path,” Sununu said. “You almost have to be a lawyer.”
State Rep. Rick Ladd, R-Haverhill, called the bill’s signing “almost historical.”

He was a school principal and at one time was also involved in getting special education services for a grandchild.
“When you look into it as a parent, who has the burden of proof? I did not have access to the piles of information” the school had.
Now, he said, the bill has “flipped the burden of proof.”

http://indepthnh.org/2021/07/29/sununu-signs-special-education-bill/