ACIP's meeting today on COVID

Did you know that Risk-Benefit analysis has gone the way of the dinosaur?

Today was mind-numbing and disappointing. First the issue of strokes related to the Pfizer vaccine was covered up, even though a signal persisted for about 10 weeks with a single arm (there is another word for this but can’t think of it) p < .01.

The CDC data claimed there was more myocarditis from the Pfizer vaccine than the Moderna, which is the opposite of what about ten countries who published their data have found. And about 8 European countries banned the Moderna vaccine in young men.

The chart shown daily in the NY Times of hospitalizations and deaths comparing vaxxed and unvaxxed was shown by, I think, 4 different speakers. This is a bogus chart I have previously discussed. CDC suppressed the collection of cases in the vaxxed by restricting hospitals to reporting only cases that had a cycle threshold of 28 and below, while CTs up to 45 are being used to diagnose cases in the unvaxxed. This cynical methodology was rolled out by CDC on May 1, 2021 and was even reported in some mainstream media. Thus high rates of false negatives were baked into the collection for the vaxxed, and high rates of false positives were baked into the collection for the unvaxxed.

Then data were presented showing the bivalent booster had about 50% efficacy for 2-4 months, when compared to people who had had the original vaccines. But they did not dare compare COVID cases in those who got the bivalent booster to case rates in the unvaxxed. By comparing the boosters to a vaccinated cohort that tended to last be vaccinated a year earlier, they had a comparison cohort that was suffering from negative efficacy. This comparison spuriously boosted the apparent efficacy of the boosters.

The members kept making assertions about how effective and safe the vaccines are, and how dangerous COVID is, and you wonder what planet they are on. They are clueless about equity but are enamoured of the word. I don’t think any of the several black members used it, though Jose Romero warned we might hit an “equity cliff”—was he saying more and more blacks will refuse vaccinations? I can’t decode all their messages. Wish they could learn to say what they mean.

CDC has about 13,000 employees, and there were at least 100 people involved in the presentations given today. It is disheartening, to say the least, that we are educating a whole generation of public health professionals to fake data, to lose sight of proofessional ethics and to take no responsiblity to provide accurate and honest advice for the populations that are paying their salaries.

Should you vaccinate kids? Look at how small is the increase in antibody positivity against COVID when comparing the naturally infected on the left with the infected and vaccinated group on the right in this CDC graph. The “benefit” from additionally being vaccinated is marginal, 3% or 4% in most age groups—if it is in fact a benefit.