The decision to recommend boosters was based on data coming out of Israel, reports Marty Makary at the Wall Street Journal. Yet the CDC has its own full set of data on infections, transmissions and vaccinations in the United States since the start of the pandemic. But the agency refuses to present this data in its entirety to the public.
This data––focusing on breakthrough infections and booster efficacy specifically as compared to natural immunity––is essential to creating a sound strategy to combat SARS-CoV-2. The data from Israel is some of the most extensive currently available, and the Biden administration cited it when it announced its booster shot recommendation. The World Health Organization has criticized the Biden plan, saying the data is insufficient to recommend boosters at this time. Two longtime officials at the FDA recently resigned apparently to protest the pressure coming from both the CDC and the White House to speed up its approval process.
One Israeli study shows that boosters significantly reduce the likely hood of severe disease in people over 60 (a 10-fold reduction). Supposedly the FDA is currently evaluating the data from Israel. But the CDC also has its own data on Covid infections and transmissions in the United States, yet it has not made this information public. The data it possesses consists of 40 million Americans who have contracted Covid and 200 million who have been vaccinated, including the vaccine brand, dosage and dosing schedule, as well as the date of inoculation. “Calculating the rate of U.S. breakthrough infections and subsequent hospitalizations and deaths isn’t the Manhattan Project,” writes Makary. “It’s Epidemiology 101.”
In this era of extreme polarization, where everything including the virus and vaccines have been politicized, a proper cataloging of all data would do wonders in sending a clear message to the public. On the subject of natural immunity specifically, the CDC has produced virtually nothing.
By contrast, Israel has studied 700,000 people and found natural immunity from previous infection to be 27 times more effective than immunity from vaccination. But US policy makers have all but dismissed natural immunity and still demand that everyone get the vaccine regardless of antibodies that may already be present. As many as 15 other studies have shown natural immunity to be superior to inoculation. But now the Biden Administration wants businesses to fire employees who don’t need to be vaccinated.
Last month the CDC released one of its own studies that concluded that vaccination is superior to natural immunity. But that study, which showed the rate of infection was less than 0.01%, only lasted two months and only produced data from Kentucky. The CDC has well over a year of data from all 50 states, but it only wants us to see this small sample of the whole picture. Why? The public is being presented with anecdotal evidence to justify a massive one-size-fits-all policy. And the hubris with which this policy is being enforced is beyond condescending, separating the public into oppositions. Either you’re on team vaccine or you’re on team death.
But the only team we all should be on is team herd immunity however it may come about. Perhaps some health officials are afraid that some will choose infection over inoculation for a more robust immunity. But health officials should be telling us the whole truth and policy makers can then decide what policy best fits. Catering to the lowest common denominator like this only furthers mistrust in all our institutions.
Israel also provided results of a study showing that one dose of the Pfizer vaccine to be 100% effective in protecting children 12-15. Considering that some heart complications can result in young men after the second dose, the CDC should not push two doses for children.
“These are the studies U.S. public health agencies should be doing but aren’t,” concludes Makary. “By any metric, the CDC has failed in its primary task of preparing the country for a pandemic and telling us how to reduce harm from the novel Covid pathogen.”
The concept of Regulatory Capture can be defined by simply, “follow the money.”
Regulatory capture is an economic theory that says regulatory agencies may come to be dominated by the industries or interests they are charged with regulating. The result is that an agency, charged with acting in the public interest, instead acts in ways that benefit incumbent firms in the industry it is supposed to be regulating.
Considering the characteristic overlap of career politicians, regulatory agencies, and industry lobbyists, this is not an implausible scenario. Pandemic profiteering should not be considered beyond the realm of possibility.
The bureaucratic inertia that has led President Biden to mandate vaccines across the board appears to follow the pattern of political expediency that has become the administration’s modus operandi. His executive order shifts attention away from the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan, and it shield the president from criticism should Covid cases continue to rise. It also further polarizes an already politically fractured society by essentially pitting the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, and all this so that Joe Biden can once again claim plausible deniability.
In Related News On Incompetence
Most countries are now trying to find the best way to reopen their borders and economies, but the United States continues to lockdown with travel restrictions more strict than when the pandemic first began. Fully vaccinated people from countries with lower case rates than the United States continue to be banned from entry.
On October 1, a new mandate from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services will go into effect, requiring all new immigrants applying for permanent residency to be vaccinated against Covid-19. However this mandate will not apply to the migrants crossing the southern border illegally. If and when they decide to apply for permanent residency, then inoculation will be required. Lawsuits alleging 14th Amendment violations have already been filed.
M. Danko
September 16, 2021
Terse.blog