Biden's Numbers, Preelection Edition

With Election Day just weeks away, we published an article today on key statistical measures of how the U.S. has performed under President Joe Biden. 

In a quarterly feature we call "Biden's Numbers," we review the latest data from federal departments and agencies, such as the Census Bureau, Energy Information Administration, and Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Five staffers -- including Director Emeritus Brooks Jackson, who started this feature as "Obama's Numbers" in 2012 -- had a hand in sifting through the data and presenting you the facts. 

For this preelection edition, we got our first look at Census Bureau data on poverty rates, median household income and health insurance coverage in 2021. We also have just-released FBI crime data for last year and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' data on handgun manufacturing in 2021. 

There's information in our story that runs counter to party narratives. Did you know that U.S. oil production is up under Biden?

There's also data that confirms the party narratives. Apprehensions of those trying to cross the southwest border illegally are up a staggering 330% for the past 12 months, compared with President Donald Trump’s last year in office. 

For more, read the full story, "Biden's Numbers, October 2022 Update."

Reader: Is it true that the newest Covid vaccine was only tested on 8 mice?

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: Our science editor, Jessica McDonald, last month addressed your question in "Q&A on Omicron-Updated COVID-19 Boosters."  It's under the subhead “What evidence supports the use of these omicron-updated boosters?” 

Jessica wrote:

To authorize the updated boosters, the FDA borrowed its approach for influenza vaccines, which each year are modified to match the flu strains that are expected to circulate that season. Because the changes are only tweaks — and because it would be impractical if not impossible to test the vaccines in people prior to the flu season — flu vaccines are approved without doing clinical studies each year.

The omicron-updated boosters are similar in that they have not yet been evaluated in people, although there is other supporting evidence to suggest that they will work.

She goes on to explain that experiments from both Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech “show that mice previously vaccinated and then boosted with the bivalent BA.4/5 vaccines have higher BA.5 neutralizing antibody responses than those boosted with the original vaccine.”

She then writes:

Moderna also challenged, or intentionally infected, vaccinated and boosted mice with BA.5 and found animals who received the bivalent BA.4/5 booster were better protected in their lungs than those boosted with the original vaccine.

An unpublished study posted as a preprint following authorization of the new boosters also found that mice given Moderna’s BA.4/5 booster had a stronger and broader antibody response compared with those given the original booster, which appeared to translate into better protection against BA.5 in the lung.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson and some posts on social media have highlighted the lack of clinical data on the BA.4/5 boosters, noting that the specific vaccines have only been given to eight mice. That’s mostly true (Pfizer lists eight, while Moderna shows 10), but it’s misleading to suggest that’s the only information scientists have on these shots.

As we said, the revised boosters are not entirely new vaccines. Regulators considered the abundance of data indicating the original shots are safe and effective, particularly against severe disease, and they had the clinical data from the highly similar BA.1 bivalent boosters along with the animal data.

This week, Pfizer said “early data” from its ongoing clinical trial on humans found that the updated booster provides a strong immune response to the current omicron subvariants. The trial involves 900 volunteers. 

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Trump’s Faulty ‘Double Standard’ Document Claim": Former President Donald Trump made a series of faulty comparisons to other past presidents to argue that he was being held to a double standard regarding the FBI’s pursuit of his presidential documents. 
• "Florida’s COVID-19 Vaccination Analysis Is Flawed, Experts Say": The state of Florida recently announced that it was no longer recommending that younger males receive mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, based on an unpublished analysis that purportedly found an increased risk of cardiac-related death following vaccination. But experts who specialize in the unique method used in the analysis say it was not properly done — and even if it had been, the findings would not mean that individuals should not get vaccinated.
• "Stacey Abrams Opposed Boycotts in Atlanta, Contrary to Facebook Post": Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams opposed the state’s new election law and gun laws, but she spoke out against corporations using economic sanctions to protest the laws. Yet, a social media post falsely claims Abrams “lobbied to move” the MLB’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta last year and a music festival this year. 
• "In Context: Laxalt’s Comments on Latino Businesses": In the tight Senate race in Nevada, where nearly a third of the population is Latino, the campaigns of Republican challenger Adam Laxalt and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto have been locked in a dispute over remarks Laxalt made about the impact of the pandemic on Latino jobs and businesses. 
• "Unraveling Wisconsin GOP Candidate’s Abortion Position": The Republican Accountability PAC says in a Facebook ad that Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels “supports" an abortion ban with "no exceptions for rape [or] incest.” The ad doesn’t tell the whole story. 

• "Detractores de las vacunas contra el COVID-19 tergiversan un seminario de los CDC sobre las causas de los coágulos sanguíneos": Los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades (CDC, por sus siglas en inglés) organizaron un seminario en internet sobre el tratamiento de los coágulos sanguíneos, que se espera que aumenten a medida que la población estadounidense envejezca y la tasa de obesidad aumente. Pero algunos detractores de las vacunas tergiversaron el seminario para sugerir incorrectamente que el previsto aumento de los coágulos sanguíneos está relacionado con las vacunas contra el COVID-19.