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CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tested positive for COVID last week in spite of being “up to date” with her vaccines. Although the press release didn’t say what “up to date” meant, it’s reasonable to assume that Walensky has had multiple booster shots on top of the original vaccination. Just a few days earlier, the CDC recommended adding COVID vaccines to regular immunization requirements for children attending public school.
Don’t worry, the Washington Post reassured us in the vain hope of keeping fear of mandates out of midterm voters’ minds, the CDC doesn’t have the power to mandate anything.
Of course, we live in a world where the word “recommendation” no longer means something is “voluntary.” It’s irrelevant that the CDC does not have the legal authority to mandate vaccines as a condition for school attendance. We all know that when the CDC recommends something, health officials and school boards enforce the “recommendation” as if it were a command from the high priestess herself.
Many skeptics with memories noted how, in 2021, Walensky assured the public, “we know that at the individual level, vaccinated people are safe.” But what are they safe from? Falling anvils and alien attacks? Because, as the doctor must now admit, vaccinations do not keep you safe from COVID. Everyone knows somebody who took the vaccination and has since contracted COVID. Just 12 months ago, you could be censored on Facebook for suggesting what is now obviously true. We still don’t know how many of the vaccinated died from COVID.
So if the vaccines don’t stop people from getting COVID, how did the CDC reach the conclusion that schools should require COVID vaccinations to enter school? What is the CDC telling us to justify this “recommendation” that, as we all know, is really a mandate? It now turns out that the CDC made booster recommendations without the benefit of any data to show additional shots would be safe or effective. That’s not science, and we shouldn’t have to comply with mandates based on guesses and wishful thinking.
Anyone attempting to research the risks and benefits of vaccinating children against COVID will quickly arrive at the CDC’s cartoonish fact sheet. The CDC declares: “The known risks of COVID-19 and possible severe complications outweigh the potential risks of having a rare, adverse reaction to the vaccination.” But is that true? What about informing people of the data and allowing individuals to make their own choices? It’s one thing to mandate a vaccine to prevent the spread. But if the only benefit is lessening the symptoms, the government should have no role in the decision.
When one clicks through to the CDC’s supporting information for this claim, one finds this fact sheet warning of the health risks of a child contracting COVID. These include something called “multisymptom inflammatory syndrome,” in severe cases which include many of the flu-like symptoms we’ve come to associate with COVID over the past two years (fever, vomiting, diarrhea, etc.). Notably missing from the list of severe outcomes? Long-term damage to a child’s heart.
The CDC does not explain how it weighed the risks of COVID against the risks of vaccinating children. It did not provide any data in this fact sheet that might allow the reader to reconstruct the CDC’s judgment. We just have to take it on faith. “Trust the science.”
Coincidentally, Science.org this month published an eye-opening piece analyzing vaccination risks to children. The authors noted,
COVID-19 vaccines do have a rare but worrisome cardiac side effect. Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can cause chest pain and shortness of breath, has disproportionately struck older boys and young men who received the shots. Only one out of several thousand in those age groups is affected, and most quickly feel better. A tiny number of deaths have been tentatively linked to vaccine myocarditis around the world. But several new studies suggest the heart muscle can take months to heal, and some scientists worry about what this means for patients long term.
The piece goes on to report that the FDA, on which the CDC so frequently relies for its “vaccines are safe” statements, “has ordered vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna to conduct a raft of studies to assess these risks.” The authors further wrote,
Earlier this month, a team from Kaiser Permanente Northern California and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the risk of myocarditis or pericarditis—inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart—was about one in 6700 in 12- to 15-year-old boys following the second vaccine dose, and about one in 16,000 following the first booster. In 16- and 17-year-olds, it was about one in 8000 after the second dose and one in 6000 after the first booster. Men ages 18 to 30 have a somewhat elevated risk as well.
While the symptoms related to vaccine-induced heart damage usually abate, one cardiologist quoted by the piece noted a nagging observation that troubled him:
Although their heart rhythm is normal and they usually feel fine, MRI scans of their heart often show something called late gadolinium enhancement (LGE), which signifies injury to the muscle. In June, Portman and his colleagues reported in The Journal of Pediatrics that 11 of 16 patients had LGE about 4 months after their bout of myocarditis, although the area affected in the heart had shrunk since they were hospitalized.
Now some researchers are quick to point out that buried deep in the data is evidence that COVID itself also causes myocarditis in young people. But critically missing from this argument is any data demonstrating that taking the shot will reduce the chances of this dangerous complication. Isn’t it also possible that the component in the vaccine that triggers myocarditis actually adds to the risk if the person later gets COVID? If the vaccine prevented a COVID infection—which it does not—it might be worth taking the chance. But as it stands, we don’t know whether taking the vaccine just makes things worse.
The CDC has a terrible track record of hiding adverse effect data regarding the vaccines. As the New York Times noted in February, “When the CDC 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 least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected.”
Why hide this data in particular? The CDC didn’t say. But the obvious suspicion is that this is the group for which COVID poses relatively mild risks which do not outweigh the risks of an adverse effect from the vaccine.
The New York Times reported in December that over 200 million Americans were fully vaccinated. As Joe Biden recently noted, this number has fallen to just 20 million Americans as the definition of “fully vaccinated” has expanded to require booster after booster. Is that true? Yes, it is. CDC statistics put the number at 19.4 million. That means 90 percent of the people who faithfully took the vaccine have come to doubt what they’re being told about the boosters. The Biden Administration spent vast sums of public money talking up vaccinations; public confidence imploded anyway.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has begun to investigate whether federal employees making vaccine recommendations might be accepting money from pharmaceutical companies and whether that might have something to do with these nonsensical “recommendations.” According to one report, 1,800 scientists at the NIH, which controls much of the COVID-19 policy and recommendations, received an estimated $350-$400 million from pharmaceutical companies and other corporations with skin in the game. The NIH kept these payments secret until an organization called OpenTheBooks.com sued to force the NIH to disclose these payments.
Yet the vaccine mandates continue as the CDC assaults America with sing-song condescending public service announcements. Nothing is said of the gargantuan mistake (lie?) that justified the mandates in the first place—i.e., that the vaccines guarantee immunity from COVID. We’re just told, in the vaguest of language, that the vaccines will make us safer. Can we believe them at this point? How can we?
The CDC has blown its credibility and Americans should not be forced to comply with mandates that rely on its recommendations. The CDC was obviously wrong when it told Americans that we would not get COVID if we took the shot. It hasn’t owned up to that mistake but continues pushing the vaccine anyway. Americans have turned their back on the CDC and its recommendations. But be warned: when the midterms are over, the mandates are all set to resume.
Reporting from American Greatness.
