The New York Times published the following on February 20, 2022:
For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public.
When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group the data showed was least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected.
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Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country’s response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said.
Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control. Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots. And wastewater surveillance across the nation would spot outbreaks and emerging variants early.
Without the booster data for 18- to 49-year-olds, the outside experts whom federal health agencies look to for advice had to rely on numbers from Israel to make their recommendations on the shots.
Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable.”Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the agency’s deputy director for public health science and surveillance said the pandemic exposed the fact that data systems at the C.D.C., and at the state levels, are outmoded and not up to handling large volumes of data. C.D.C. scientists are trying to modernize the systems, he said.
The Federalist published this response opinion on March 22:
CDC scientists and clinicians are violating their own taxpayer-funded agency’s ethical, scientific and public health codes and policies to protect the American public. What should the consequences be?
I’m not complaining about the lack of transparency of top-secret military information that would endanger our national security; I’m talking about public health information regarding drug safety and vaccine efficacy. This selective omission of public health data is fraud, and top agency officials should be made an example of for their unethical behavior.
An even more gruesome thought is: If these officials were despicable enough to omit these data, what else do Americans still not know about “for their own good”?
The day of reckoning for endangering American lives needs to come, and the sooner the better.
